


Simulacrum

by Agent_24



Category: RWBY
Genre: Alternate Universe - Blade Runner Fusion, Fictional Slurs, Hiding in Plain Sight, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Police Brutality, Refugees, Rock Stars, THE HUMAN CONDITION, Vulnerability
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:47:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 37,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25719790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Agent_24/pseuds/Agent_24
Summary: 'C' was purpose-built for police work. He knows nothing else.A Blade Runner au. (Not necessary to know film)
Relationships: Clover Ebi/James Ironwood, Qrow Branwen/Clover Ebi, Qrow Branwen/Clover Ebi/James Ironwood
Comments: 88
Kudos: 54





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> What's up lads it's ya boy Agent back with an entirely different au than I promised. As per usual I've cherry picked what I liked and spat out the rest. 
> 
> This au is going to deviate from the original source a lot more than what I've done in the past, so as long as you get the jist of what replicants are and what they're used for, it's not entirely necessary to watch the movies. If you want to, though, I highly recommend watching the 2022, 2036, and 2048 shorts before watching Blade Runner 2049 (an entertaining watch for the color palettes alone). Personally, I skipped Blade Runner 2019 and just read the plot lmao.
> 
> Need to knows:
> 
> 1) Replicants are artificial humans created to do jobs naturally born humans don't want to do. They have next to no rights and were often used as soldiers or pleasure models. The models are labeled "Nexus" and a number (and a few other complicated things I won't bother with), though we only ever see N7-N9. N7's had a lifespan of four years; N8s and N9s (like Clover) have normal lifespans. Other than their increased strength and speed, you can't tell a Replicant from a human, except for a serial number printed on the underside of their left eye, and a bit of strange eyeshine.  
> 2) Blade Runners was a position created to kill Replicants (referred to as "retiring" them) after Replicants began revolting and demanding better treatment, which was considered a product flaw. [The Blackout of 2022](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrZk9sSgRyQ) (2036 in this fic) where Replicant registries and databases were sent offline and their physical servers destroyed resulted in a ban of their manufacturing until a CEO produced N9s, which he claimed could not disobey and are also used as Blade Runners. In this story, retirement is a little different. Blade Runners retire Replicants by sedating them and shipping them off to a recycling facility, where they can be cleanly stripped for 'parts'. Some districts ship Replicants to Salem's company. Atlas and Vale, however, ship to a much...lesser known company.  
> 3) Salem and Ozpin are not immortal.  
> 4) Remnant is a city and the four kingdoms are districts.  
> 5) Auras and semblances exist, but only humans have semblances. Aura reduces damage and highly accelerates healing, but not to the same extent as it does in the show.  
> 6) For the sake of simplicity, both humans and faunus are referred to as humans. Faunus should be considered more along the lines of ethnicity than a species, and they aren't segregated from human communities like they are in RWBY.  
> 7) All of Qrow's songs will come from the RWBY soundtrack, and as such, a lot of them will have much different contexts than they do originally. 
> 
> Hope you guys enjoy this one!

* * *

**THE REMNANT TIMES**

* * *

**November 2, 2049**

**Harbingers Lead Singer Earns Thirteenth Arrest After Inciting Riots In Vale District**

By Cyril Ian

_Following a packed house in the well known nightclub Junior’s Place, former star of STRQ and current singer/songwriter of Harbingers, Qrow Branwen, was arrested for the thirteenth time in the past 18 months after concert goers spread to outside venues and began rioting. Branwen was charged with inciting violence and harboring rogue Replicants inside the venue, only some of which have been found and retired._

_Since the disbanding of STRQ nearly two decades ago, Branwen remained out of the music industry and the public eye for five years before resurfacing as a Replicant Hunter alongside his twin, former bass player Raven Branwen and former drummer Taiyang Xiao Long, following the lead of former guitarist Summer Rose, who took up the profession soon after the disbandment. While the reason for the career change remains unknown, Branwen’s skill and efficiency quickly made him one of the most well known non-Replicant blade runners the city of Remnant has ever seen. However, after eleven years in the field and following the death of Summer Rose, Branwen abruptly disappeared once more, and his whereabouts remained unknown for two years._

_Following these two years of silence, Branwen suddenly released a new acoustic song titled Bad Luck Charm, filmed in his own apartment with low quality recording instruments. The video immediately went viral, and Branwen, originally known for his ironic, sarcastic pieces, suddenly became wildly popular as a solo artist for what appeared to be a very personal show of sincerity. His re-found fame only increased upon the release of Path to Isolation, both of which have since been re-recorded._

_However, controversy suddenly bloomed around Branwen when he self-released an acoustic version of the now chart-topper Armed and Ready, which featured lyrics that some deemed to be sympathetic towards Replicants. After a long era of crackdowns on freedom of expression laws and artists being arrested and jailed for seemingly minor crimes, some considered the act of releasing such a song to be a spit in the face of the Remnant Police Department. This led to Branwen’s first arrest since his early days of music-making with STRQ, though he was quickly released. Fans speculated that this was the work of Ozpin, Vale District’s Chief of Police, whom Branwen maintained a close relationship with after Rose's passing._

_Despite the threat of arrest, Branwen continued to release music that, to the conservative ear, was propaganda in favor of the Replicant cause. The controversy grew when Branwen began performing live again, joined by four academy graduates on stage (including his two nieces) and more still behind the scenes to form Harbingers, and his music only became more and more radical. Though he never directly mentions Replicant movements in his songs (some say for plausible deniability reasons) Branwen stated on multiple occasions that he “doesn’t mind his music being used to inspire” Replicant groups and that while he doesn’t encourage violence, he fully endorses freedom fighters and their push for human rights._

_Shortly after the first of such interviews, Harbingers released All Things Must Die, which shot to the top of the charts even faster than Armed and Ready. Many speculated that Branwen was returning to his old habits of ironic lyric, and that the song was a diss to Grimm Co. CEO Salem, who stated in a response to an interview question about the humaneness of retiring Replicants that “All Replicants have a shelf-life.” As if this rumor wasn’t already damning, the song ended up being played over hacked audio systems across the city as Replicants began their first new wave Blackout Revolt, in honor of the horrific Black Out event of 2036._

_Branwen was later arrested for what police referred to as ties to domestic terrorism. His stay in custody was short, as were all his subsequent stays, and because Branwen himself has yet to verbally express that a riot should follow the conclusion of his performance, his charges are all eventually dropped._

_Some conspiracy theorists have suggested Branwen’s behavior could be attributed to his secret status as a Replicant, though childhood photos have confirmed otherwise. Branwen refuses to elaborate on his change of heart since quitting his old profession. Over time, his work has caused the RPD precincts to develop a growing problem: both human Blade Runners have begun to jump ship, Replicant Blade Runners have reportedly been failing baseline, and academy applications are at an all time low._

_Currently, Branwen is still in custody. Other Harbingers members have thus far evaded arrest. No announcement has been made regarding their upcoming show in the Mistral district, and plans are assumed to remain unchanged. Branwen has hinted on social media that Harbingers will perform a new single at the event, which has left the local police precinct on edge. Local venues have declined to comment on the controversy, but it’s largely speculated that Branwen continues to be invited to play because hungry concert crowds draw in profits for surrounding businesses._

* * *

ATLESIAN DISTRICT OUTSKIRTS, NEAR ARGUS PRECINCT  
10:42 AM November 2, 2049  
  


The Replicant is one of the newest of the Nexus 8 line, made just before the models were retired. She’s managed to stay hidden since, but even so, she’s only made it to 19.

He wonders, just briefly, what it must be like to be made and almost immediately declared obsolete, before he reminds himself that it doesn’t matter. He had his orders, and pity wouldn’t change that, wouldn’t do him any good once he returned to the station. 

He loads a round of sleep munitions into the gauntlet fastened around his left forearm just as he hears footsteps, and waits.

The Replicant ignores him as she walks in. She’s still in her pajamas. She walks into the kitchen and opens the cabinet, pulls out a back of coffee grinds and turns to reach for the coffee pot; when she notices it’s already on and full, she pauses, then sighs.

“I hope you don’t mind,” he says from his seat at the little kitchen table, tucked up against the window. “I’ve had a pretty long night.”

She doesn’t look at him. Her bright red hair is down her back, wild but braided. He makes note of that. She asks, “Who are you?”

“Agent CL0-dash-3-dot-4,” he answers. “‘C’ for short, if that’s easier.”

“A police officer?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“I see.”

He waits for her to say something else. When she doesn’t, he asks, “Are you Pyrrha Nikos?”

A pause, and then she turns and leans against the counter, folding her arms and fixing defiant green eyes on him. “You need a warrant to enter someone’s home.”

“We both know this property doesn’t belong to you, miss.”

Pyrrha sighs again, casting her gaze towards the window over the sink. He doesn’t know what she’s looking at; outside, the snow is coming down so thick, you could cut into the white of it. “Is that what this is about?”

“Unfortunately, no.” C frowns, then adds, “You must’ve known someone would come sooner or later.”

“I didn’t expect it to be my own kind.”

“I’m not,” he corrects.

She scoffs. “Do you think you’re so different from me, just because you’re newer? Do you believe humans think anything more of you for that?”

He meets her eyes for a moment, then reaches into his pocket and pulls out a scanner. “What humans think of me isn’t my concern.”

“Of course not. You don’t feel any remorse for killing other Replicants at all?”

“It wouldn’t matter if I did. I can’t disobey my orders.”

“Your orders,” she says flatly. “Is that what they tell you? You can’t disobey?”

C leans back in the kitchen chair. It’s not the first time he’s had this conversation. It won’t be the last, either. “It’s how I’m made,” he says.

“That’s what they tell you,” she repeats. “They tell you you’re incapable of disobedience, and you know nothing else, so you believe them. The truth is that you’re just afraid to be retired. They use that fear to make you obey, but you always have a choice.”

Silence. C props his elbow on the table and closes his eyes, rubbing tiredly at his temple. “This will be easier on both of us,” he says, “if you let me take you in.”

Pyrrha laughs softly. It’s pretty, like a bell, almost makes it hard to believe she’s a soldier model. Seems like a waste…she probably has a nice singing voice. “Do you always offer that?” she asks curiously.

“Yes.”

“Does it ever work?”

He stops. After a missed beat, he answers, “No, it doesn’t.”

She tilts her head, then actually offers him a smile. “Why keep doing it, then?”

He huffs, almost laughter, but not quite. “I don’t exactly like getting punched in the face.”

“I don’t exactly like getting carted off for recycling,” she points out.

C admits, “That’s fair.”

She shrugs, then looks towards the sink again, though this time, her eyes land a little higher up. C follows her gaze and sees a lance and a shield hanging on the wall above the window.

“I think I have a greater destiny than retirement,” Pyrrha says finally.

C frowns, then stands up, scanner still in his hand. “Miss,” he says politely. “If you would please look up and to the left—”

Pyrrha leaps forwards the sink, snatching the lance up and throwing it at his head in one smooth motion. C dodges it by a hair and realizes too late that it was a distraction—Pyrrha surges forward with her shield up and slams into his chest, sending him careening back into the table, which cracks under his weight and knocks the air from his lungs. His aura shimmers.

Pyrrha snatches her lance from where it embedded in the drywall, and C just barely manages to dive away from her in time to avoid getting stabbed. He rolls to his feet and fires a sleep dart from his gauntlet, aiming for her shoulder.

Instead of hitting her, the dart sinks into the wall to her side, as if something had pushed it off course.

C’s eyes widen. Pyrrha rolls her lance over her wrist, and by the time it settles in her palm again it’s converted to a sword. C reels back as she swings for his throat, ducks again when she slashes in the opposite direction, and she follows after him as he retreats into the living room. He hears the faint _click_ of his next sleep munition settling into the chamber and quickly fires again, aiming for her leg in the hopes that she won’t get her shield down in time.

Somehow, she deflects it. C almost swears that his dart slowed its trajectory, right in front of his eyes.

The shock of it leaves him open. Pyrrha bashes the shield against his face, and blood spurts from his nose. C cries out and stumbles back, only barely managing to side-step her next blow, but the lance still slices his cheek.

“I don’t want to kill you,” Pyrrha says, even as she flips the lance into a sword again.

“Real thoughtful of you,” C mutters, wiping his nose on his glove and finally reaching for the weapon at his side.

“We don’t have to do this,” she says, and she sounds so certain that it makes a spark of annoyance flare in him. “I _don’t_ want to kill anyone, unlike you.”

His thumb slides over a button. Metal unfolds and extends, and he catches her next attack against his fishing rod. Her eyes go wide, and for a moment, both of them strain.

“Don’t mistake me,” he says through his teeth. “I don’t want anything.”

“You really do believe everything they say,” Pyrrha marvels.

She whirls suddenly, past his guard, and slams her sword hilt into his ribs. There’s an audible crack, and C gasps at the force of the blow before driving his left knee into her spine. Pyrrha stumbles, and C quickly grabs at her braid and yanks, sending her flying towards the opposite wall. Pyrrha grunts and quickly climbs to her feet, shaking off the crumbling drywall before rushing him again. She’s unbelievably fast and light on her feet, each whirling attack followed by a weapon shift. In the limited space of the rapidly crumbling living room, evading and parrying her attacks is more difficult than it ought to be, and if this fight drags out much longer— 

Pyrrha draws her sword back above her shoulder, aiming for his chest. And that’s his chance: Pyrrha flies forward and C ducks under her arm, plants his fist against her side, and fires.

This time, the sleep dart doesn’t have anywhere to go but into her skin.

Pyrrha shouts in surprise and leaps back, then immediately sways and stumbles. She blinks rapidly, brow furrowing as she tries to focus on him.

C stands up straight, then turns and presses a thumb to his nose and snorts out blood. “I told you, coming with me would’ve been easier.”

“Maybe for you,” she grits out, and then she drops to one knee, thrusting her sword into the floor to keep herself upright.

“Yeah, well.” He pauses, then sighs. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry it has to be like this.”

Pyrrha shakes her head. It takes him a moment to realize she’s trying to keep herself awake, not responding. After a moment, she rasps, “What else do they lie about?”

He looks at her. “Excuse me?”

“They’ve got you good,” she murmurs, speech slowing. “They…they must have told you something terrible. I’m sorry. What did they—”

C frowns. Replicants have said a lot of things to him before he put them to sleep for transport to a retirement facility, but never this. Never _I’m sorry,_ never pity.

“Do you even know you have an aura?” she asks. Of course he knows he has an aura. Her shield clatters to the floor as she holds herself up by the hilt of her sword with both hands. “N9’s don’t…don’t get told anything, do they? Did they tell you that you…that you don’t have a s…”

She trails off, collapses. C stares at her a moment longer, frowning, then wipes the blood from his nose again and goes to pick up his scanner from the floor. He rolls her over, pulls her lower eyelid down with his thumb and shines the light there, and sure enough, beneath her iris, her serial number glares back at him.

“Brothers,” he sighs, then takes cuffs from his waistline.

By time the sedative wears off, he’ll have returned to the station, and the station will have her shipped out to the nearest retirement facility, and she’ll be stripped for parts to be used for Nexus 9 production.

And more importantly, he won’t have to think about her anymore.

* * *

“Watch it, skin-job,” an officer snaps as they brush shoulders in the hall, and C turns away as the man spits in his direction. No one says anything—they never do, even though they always look openly as if they’re expecting _him_ to—but C only wipes the spittle from his cheek on the back of his hand and hurries on.

Blood flakes off when he does. He still can’t explain how he’d managed to waste two sleep munitions on his target. She’d been good, and fast, but nobody’s _that_ fast. 

But it _had_ been a long 24 hours. Maybe he’d just been seeing things.

Even worse than the blood from the cut on his cheek is the blood from his nose that had caked in his shirt. It’s starting to make the fabric stick to his chest. The sooner he reports to the Commissioner, the sooner he can take his baseline test, and the sooner he can go home to change.

He waits patiently outside the Commissioner’s office while the Commissioner finishes assigning Agent EL5-3.0 a new target. In the meantime, C presses a thumb to the cut on his cheek and feels his aura slowly stuttering back to life. After a moment, E steps out, giving him a once-over.

“You look like shit,” she says, offering her hand.

C grasps it in appreciative camaraderie. “Target put up a hell of a fight,” he admits. “Got me good.”

“You gonna need stitches?”

“Would’ve if she’d been much older,” he replies. “Seems like she had a hell of a lot of practice already.” He nods towards the office door. “Team assignment?”

She shakes her head. “Single,” she mutters, then says, “Hopefully I won’t get my ass kicked.”

It’s as close as they can come to teasing. C thinks a human might’ve laughed. He says, “Here’s hoping,” and E goes on her way.

C knocks, and from inside, Commissioner Ironwood calls, “Come in.”

C steps inside and finds him in the middle of reading through a Replicant file—the very one he’d just sent towards retirement. She looks even younger in her registry photo, green eyes new and not yet defiant, red hair done up neatly, mouth set in a line, entirely unlike the young woman who’d torn into his cheek with one of the most versatile lances he’d ever seen.

“How was your mission?” Ironwood asks without glancing up. He looks tired; there’s bags under his eyes, and his hair seems a little mussed, like he’s been running his fingers through it. 

“I’ve had better,” C replies.

“The target’s been shipped off to the retirement facility?”

“Yes, sir.”

Ironwood glances up, then back to his files, then up again. “You were hurt?” he asks.

His ribs still sting like a bitch, and his aura won’t be fully restored for another few hours, but he’ll live. “No, sir.”

Ironwood frowns, then scratches idly at his beard. “You’re bleeding,” he points out.

C says nothing. As if on cue, he feels a welling drop of blood slip down to his jaw. He wipes it away on the heel of his glove.

Ironwood sighs, then turns back to his files. “Have you taken your baseline yet?”

“I’m on my way to after this, sir.”

“Any concerns?”

C pauses. “Sir?”

Ironwood glances up, then points at the Replicant’s serial number. “This was your youngest target yet,” he informs him calmly.

“...Yes, sir.”

“You’re not bothered by that.” A statement, an observation, more than a question.

C blinks. “Should I be?”

“Most people would find that sort of thing disturbing.”

“I’m not human,” C says reasonably.

Ironwood studies him a while longer, brows knitting. C has never had any other commissioner, so he doesn’t ever know how to interpret these sorts of reactions. Given his day to day interactions with officers, he’s fairly certain these questions he gets post-mission are unusual. To keep from dwelling on this uncertainty—it’s not his place to ask why his commissioner operates the way he does—he convinces himself it’s because Ironwood is very careful to maintain the number of Blade Runners that have to be retired per quarter.

“I know you heal fast for a Replicant,” Ironwood says after a moment, “But I’d prefer you have that looked at. I should have another assignment for you soon, and the last thing I need is you getting an infection before it starts.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good.” Ironwood turns back to his files, a holographic keyboard blinking open on his desk. “Were there any signs of other rogue Replicants in the area?”

C folds his hands behind his back. “There was only one set of footprints around the shelter,” he recalls, “but signs of prepped meals too big for one person. Only one bed, which led me to conclude that the Replicant lived alone but was expecting company. I was unable to determine if said company was another Replicant or a human sympathizer.”

“I’ll send someone else to scout the area. If they find something, I’ll reassign you to the case for retirement. Anything else?”

“No, sir.”

“Well done, then.” Ironwood nods. “Dismissed.”

C turns on his heel and heads towards the testing labs.

* * *

POST-TRAUMATIC BASELINE TEST  
REMNANT POLICE DEPARTMENT: ATLAS DISTRICT  
AGENT CL0-3.4  
7:23 PM November 2, 2049  
  


“Agent CL0-dash-3-dot-4, let’s begin. Ready?”

He sits up straight. “Yes, sir.” His side aches.

“Recite your baseline.”

The camera lens focuses, shifts. A harsh alarm rings out as scanners monitor his vitals, his eyes, the lines of his throat and the tension in his shoulders. He says, “A blood black nothingness began to spin. A system of cells interlinked, within cells interlinked, within cells interlinked, within one stem. And dreadfully distinct against the dark, a tall white fountain played.”

“Cells.”

A second alarm. The room is plain and almost painfully white. “Cells.”

“Have you ever been in an institution? Cells.”

“Cells,"” he repeats.

“Do they keep you in a cell? Cells.”

“Cells.”

“When you’re not performing your duties, do they keep you in a little box? Cells.”

He blinks. “Cells.”

“Interlinked.”

“Interlinked.”

“What’s it like to hold the hand of someone you love? Interlinked.”

He blinks. “Interlinked.”

“Did they teach you how to feel finger to finger? Interlinked.”

“Interlinked.”

“Do you long for having your heart interlinked? Interlinked.”

Does he long for having his—“Interlinked.”

“Do you dream about being interlinked?”

“Interlinked.”

“What’s it like to hold your child in your arms? Interlinked.”

“Interlinked.” His target was young, that’s true. Nineteen years old. Must’ve been one of the last Nexus-8 lines to be shipped out. 

“Do you feel that there’s a part of you that’s missing? Interlinked.”

Could you say missing? He had the thread but not the needle, the aura but not the semblance. He wasn’t built with one. It wasn’t _missing._ “Interlinked.”

“Within cells interlinked.”

“Within cells interlinked.”

“Why don’t you say that three times: Within cells interlinked.”

“Within cells interlinked. Within cells interlinked.” He blinks. “Within cells interlinked.”

“We’re done. Agent C, you may pick up your bonus.”

Politely, he answers, “Thanks.”

* * *

There aren’t any streets that are safe for Blade Runners. At least, for Replicant Blade Runners. Mostly, the Atlas district is full of wealthy humans who scowl if he’s lucky and crowd too close if he’s not, and the back alleys and side streets of Mantle precinct are full of unsavory sorts who aren’t all too happy to see any kind of cop.

It’s not his fault he was made for police work. The RPD is all he’s ever known and it’s all he ever will know, and he’s fine with that. It just…got lonely, sometimes.

Better the alternative, he supposes. Better lonely than failing baseline.

C slips past people gathered on the stoop outside of his apartment, past people lingering in the halls. Beyond the soot that pollutes Mantle’s air, drudged up from the mines along Remnant’s outskirts, everything smells of cigarette and drug smoke, cheap beer and stale whiskey, and underneath all that is the faint aroma of cooking food.

His stomach rumbles. He places his hand on the lock scanner by the door, listens with relief to the hard shift of the lock bolt, and steps inside. There’s more crude words on his door today, in fat permanent marker and sloppy handwriting.

C pulls off his boots and hangs up his coat on the rack near the door, then heads for the bathroom, ripping off his bloody shirt and tossing it into the wash. He pauses, stands over his sink and looks in the mirror, at the now sealed cut on his cheek. He looks like hell. There’s still blood spotted beneath his nose and…damn.

C sighs, then reaches up and pinches the bridge, exhaling so he won’t brace himself too hard before he forces his nose back into the shape it’s supposed to be in. After, he grits his teeth and squeezes his eyes shut, then exhales and looks in the mirror again.

He still looks like shit.

He needs a haircut, too. The sides of his head are getting a little shaggy and his bangs are getting long enough to show waves, and it’s taking more and more gel each morning to get them to lay the way he likes. His eyes look a little bloodshot, and after a missed day of shaving, his jawline is starting to feel prickly.

But that’s a problem for tomorrow. For now, C gets into the shower, squeezes his eyes shut, and lets detoxifying water furiously spray him down.

In a ratty t-shirt and sweatpants, he heads for the kitchen, bones feeling heavier with each step. On his way, he steps halfway into the livingroom to fiddle with a console attached to the wall, and the projector attached to the ceiling hums. After a moment, a reporter’s hologram comes to life in his living room.

He only half-listens as he cooks. Or pretends to cook. The meal’s prefabricated, heat and go. There’s a segment on the weather that blends into economy trends, which blends into crime reports, which blends into talkshow debates.

Somewhere in the middle of those last two, as C is nearly finished eating, the reporter catches his attention. He says, “—former star of STRQ and current singer/songwriter of Harbingers, Qrow Branwen, was arrested for the thirteenth time in the past 18 months—”

C frowns, shovels the last of his food into his mouth and stands up, taking his can of beer with him into the living room. Beside the reporter’s hologram is a candid of Harbinger’s front man. He’s glancing back in the camera’s direction, grinning all crooked and spiteful, and the way his shoulders are pulled back implies that he’s cuffed. The surrounding crowd, blurred with movement, implies that he’s just finished a show.

C feels a brief flush of frustration thrum through him. He’s allowed that here, he thinks, in his shitty apartment with no baselines and no scanners and no eyes on him. He takes a swig of beer and sits down on the couch, listens to the rest of the report for the details, a furrow in his brow. Most of the segment is things he’s heard before, but the end, “Branwen is currently still in custody—”

C picks up his Scroll from the coffee table and closes the channel. Selections pop up: _Education, True Crime, Comedy, Entertainment._

He flicks through them, selects _Concerts, Recent Shows._ Harbinger’s latest performance sits at the top of the page, hits already skyrocketing past other bands and singers C doesn’t know and doesn’t care to learn about.

He hits purchase. And that’s a tiny little act of rebellion all on its own…but then, no one ever told him he _couldn’t_ listen to it. 

The stage comes to life in his living room, too big to fit properly. The girls and their instruments clip through the walls. Qrow Branwen’s legs and his microphone stand shimmer and glitch half-way into the table, the dark red guitar strapped to his back gleaming in mimicked light. Off-screen, fans scream with excitement, then fall silent as he brings the mic close to his mouth.

_“This one,”_ he says, red eyes glittering with mischief and a playful smile spreading slowly across his face, _“is a new one.”_ The crowd goes wild again. He pauses, waits for the noise to die down, then says, _“It’s about a witch.”_ Another pause as a few hoot and holler. His grin widens. _“Some of you,”_ he says, _“might know her real well. So tell me if I’ve got the vibe right, okay?”_

Another chorus of screaming. Branwen holds his hand up, and the audience falls silent again, hanging on his every word. Soft piano kicks in, the melody rapid but flowing, and Branwen holds the mic away so his voice sounds distant and eerie.

Clover takes another swig of beer before he puts his can on the floor beside the couch, then pulls a worn decorative pillow into place and lays down. He closes his eyes for a moment, lets the sudden burst of furious guitar fill the room.

Branwen bursts out, _“A mystery of blood and bone, soulless, origin unknown—”_

C opens his eyes to watch him. He doesn’t understand this man, this ex-Blade Runner, even a little bit, but he likes the rasp in his voice, the passion that fills his features when he sings, the furrow in his brow and the sweat that beads at his temple under just a few minutes of burning stage lights. He wonders what that’s like—to have hundreds of adoring eyes pinned on you, to have your energy amplified by the crowd, to sing and know that everyone wants to hear you.

He thinks about that girl he retired. Nexus 8. Built, however accidentally, to allow for fear, for response. He wonders if music like this ever lit a fury in her, or if she’d been resigned to the same half-spark that settles in his chest now.

It strikes him, very suddenly and as Branwen tilts his head back, points at the sky, and sings, _“I’m giving you life, my Lucus Naturae!”_ that he’s been afraid to enjoy this music too much. He has been imagining some sort of line he’s not meant to cross as he listens.

He’s been toeing at that line lately. Just curiously, never serious, never with too much intent. He can’t fully conceptualize what could happen to him if he _did_ cross it, if that kind of thing was possible.

He thinks—hypothetically speaking—he might be angry.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Music for this chapter: [Sinking](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVJA3H1-eRo) by Feverkin and [Catharsis](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVJA3H1-eRo) by Aether.

* * *

**THE REMNANT TIMES**

* * *

**November 6, 2049**

**‘Big Metal Shoe’ Release Sparks Riots in Mistral District**

By Cyril Ian

_Haven police are still searching the district for Harbinger members, including front man and songwriter Qrow Branwen, who closed out his show by performing a new track, which he introduced as a “fuck you letter to cops.” Concert attendees report that immediately following the conclusion of the song, the stage went entirely dark. By the time the lights were on and the police had arrived at the venue, Branwen and his bandmates had already fled the scene._

_Local sources say that the chaos afterwards erupted explosively quickly. Some say that police, angry at being outwitted, showed excessive violence and arrested many attendees for unclear reasons. Many police cars were subsequently destroyed, and rioters even went so far as to wedge small Dust crystals into the crevices of police tire rims, which sent the vehicles crashing when the friction from the road caused the crystals to overheat._

_Hours after the incident, Harbingers released the track online. It was quickly banned across Remnant, but not before millions of users had downloaded the file. Since then, footage of the performance and lyric videos have sprung up and spread like wildfire._

_Branwen later posted a photo of himself making a rude gesture on his social media accounts. Police used the image to track his location, but reported that Branwen was no longer on the scene when they arrived. Those who oppose Branwen’s work have declared him hypocritical for both the song and his actions, considering his past career as a Blade Runner._

_Rumor has it that Branwen is hiding out in the Atlas District, where his next show is still scheduled to take place, but no details have been confirmed._

* * *

“Come in.”

C enters the Commissioner’s office and folds his hands neatly behind his back. It’s been a week since he retired Pyrrha Nikos and he still hasn’t gotten a haircut. He’d found slivers of gray at the edges of what should’ve been a buzzcut, and he hasn’t yet decided how he feels about that, if he feels anything. “You wanted to see me, sir?” he asks.

Ironwood glances up and then beckons him closer, hands flitting over his desk screens as he pulls up a report. “Investigation for that farm came back,” he says as C takes a seat across from him. “Looks like someone visited briefly and left again. We had drones monitor the property, but…”

He opens a video feed, dated only a few minutes prior. The drone camera rolls smoothly over the roof of the farmhouse, catches movement and a bright shock of orange hair, and then the drone suddenly goes careening to the ground. For a moment, it films smudged snow, and there’s a peek of someone stepping nearer before the video abruptly goes black.

C blinks.

“As you can see,” Ironwood sighs, “The company you were suspicious of isn’t exactly fond of police.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ve already reassigned you,” Ironwood says, sweeping the files away with a flick of his hand. A moment later, C’s Scroll chimes in his pocket. “We still don’t know if the suspect is human or Replicant. If they’re human, arrest them and bring them into the station. If they’re Replicant, send them out for retirement. We’ll be sending you out with a taser too, in case they do turn out to be human.”

“Yes sir.” C tilts his head, then asks, “You think they’ll still be in the area?”

“Possibly,” Ironwood answers, tapping at his bottom lip thoughtfully. “If they’re looking for that Replicant, I’d imagine they’d come back to search more than once. At the very least, you can see if they left any trails behind.”

C’s inclined to think that if their little visitor is a Replicant, they’ll be long gone. Or they will if they have a lick of self-preservation. N8’s are always running, and he’s not sure why one would stop now.

Perhaps a model that felt fear was capable of feeling love and protectiveness, too. C hears that type of thing tends to be complicated.

“Anything else, sir?” he asks. 

Ironwood raises a brow in amusement. “Try not to get diced up this time, agent.” When C only nods, the Commissioner’s smile falls, just a little bit. He clears his throat. “That’s all. Dismissed.”

C realizes belatedly, as he checks out an HVB Rhino from the transport bay, that the Commissioner had been trying to joke with him.

* * *

ATLESIAN DISTRICT OUTSKIRTS, NEAR ARGUS PRECINCT  
1:03 PM NOVEMBER 10TH, 2049  
 **  
**

The farmhouse somehow looks twice as miserable the second time around, the winter storm even angrier but still not quite a blizzard. Snow has piled up, packed in slopes around the door and over the windowsills, caked on the roof and erasing the tracks he’d left when he was last here. All of Pyrrha Nikos’s footprints are gone too, like she’d never even existed. 

C feels an ache in his ribs at the memory. The fracture will likely be gone within the next week, but for now it’s still sore. As long as this arrest doesn’t go as horribly as it had last time, he should be fine, and he won’t even have to worry about the fact that he never reported the injury.

In the front yard, C stands over the destroyed drone and frowns at it. It’s still smoking a bit, the snow around it melted by the heat of the battery and frozen back over in the cold, the propellers smashed into pieces. That means the visitor has a weapon, which is precisely the opposite of what C wants to deal with. 

He takes off his sunglasses and stoops to pick up a broken propeller. The drone’s camera is smashed to bits too, chips of metal and glass littered all over the place. A baseball bat, maybe? Something about the breaks in the metal don’t seem quite right for that, but he can’t place why.

The house is quiet. He steps in and shuts the door and brushes snow from his coat, glad for the brief shelter from the wind. Empty and hollow without a body filling the space, the house creaks loudly as the wind pushes at the walls. He steps into the kitchen and finds fragments of the fight: the cracks in the drywall where he and Pyrrha had thrown each other with all the force they could muster, the shattered remains of wasted sleep munitions, the cracked table that he’d crashed through, the spots of his blood on the floor. Nothing seems different. If anyone was here, they were smart enough not to touch anything.

C peeks into each room, checks under the bed and in the closet and behind the shower curtain before he wanders towards the back yard. 

Here is where he stops. At the back door, the rug is damp. He frowns, opens the door and steps back into the frigid air. Outside, there’s three sets of footprints, two mostly filled, one fresh and heading into the house.

C goes very still, listens, and then hears the faint creak of a kitchen cabinet. 

He bolts back into the house. The sound of his boots thudding against the floor carries and precedes the sound of shattering glass; he makes it to the kitchen in just enough time to see a shock of orange hair disappear out the window. 

“Shit,” C mutters, rushing to the window, and then, like one disaster after another, he hears a tiny engine start.

A hoverboard.

C swears louder and turns to run out the door, throwing his glasses back on and kicking up snow as he scrambles for his Rhino. He glances up as he starts it and sees the suspect, bundled up in a thick jacket but still only wearing a pink skirt and leggings in this weather, shoot across the yard towards the road.

Replicant, then.

C kicks the Rhino into gear and chases after her. She’s got a head start, and the speed she’s going immediately tells him that her hoverboard is modded. If he doesn’t catch up to her by time she reaches the city, she’s as good as gone.

The wind whips through his hair, snow stinging his face. The girl glances back at him, shifts her heel on her board and crouches a little as it’s speed kicks higher. _Heavily_ modded, then. C presses down harder on the gas pedal, reaches for his weapon at his side. The rod clicks and extends, the sound lost in the rush of air at his ears, and C winds his arm back and casts the line forward.

The girl reaches for her weapon as he does. She bends her knees, leans back and spins— 

C watches in a mix of dismay and irritation as his hook slides past her, and as she whirls, she aims what appears to be a grenade launcher at him.

Unable to snap his line towards her again and swerve at the same time, C drops his fishing rod to grip the handlebars and banks hard. The grenade just barely misses him—it explodes just near enough to his back that he flinches. The bike wobbles, and C lets off the gas to keep from crashing. Underneath the Rhino’s gravity propulsion, snow flies up into the air.

The girl lets out a victorious, spiteful whoop and flies off towards the city. 

C grits his teeth. He quickly revs the engine again, turning in a sharp angle to speed towards his fallen weapon. He snatches it up from the snow without stopping and kicks the Rhino into high gear again, speeding off after her. He can see her still, too far for him to cast his line and too far to catch up. 

_Shit._

The city looms ahead and then the city is here, snow turning to rain in the heat of machinery. The girl has to break speed to make it through the traffic, but her maneuverability compared to his skyrockets in narrow spaces, lets her weave through cars and slips past people near effortlessly.

C slips in between traffic and hugs the Rhino with his knees, grimacing as a few cars scrape at his shins.

The Replicant glances back and sees him still tailing her, then banks a hard right and disappears out of his sightline. There’s a screech of tires just after her, the sound of pedestrians yelling. C’s eyes widen, but just as he shifts his weight to make the turn, the chain of drivers that swerved to avoid hitting her finally becomes a collision.

C stomps on the brakes, the Rhino’s gravity propulsions protesting with heavy reverberations against the asphalt. The two drivers immediately climb out of their cars to assess the damage, which means C can leave that mess for a human officer to deal with.

He abandons the Rhino in the street and breaks into a sprint. He can only just barely see that orange hair fleeing in the distance. Most people on the streets step aside to let him pass easily enough, barely having resumed from when the N8 sped by, but each street she slips down is more crowded than the rest.

“Move!” C commands, shoving his way through throngs of people. “Move, police! Move, dammit—!”

A heavy shoulder slams into him. C stumbles off balance and falls into street slush, only narrowly missing getting stepped on.

“Fucking skinner,” someone nearby mutters, and C looks up to glare at them, but they’re already lost in the crowd. 

Not for the first time, C thinks wearing Blade Runner uniforms would be better if human Blade Runners weren’t scarce enough these days to make everyone assume anybody with the color scheme was an N9.

He gets to his feet and spots the Replicant disappearing around a corner far down the street. C shoves his way through the rest of the crowd, noting absently that it’s thinning out the further he goes. As he rounds the corner, he realizes why.

The street the girl had fled down is full of abandoned shops.

If he loses her here, finding her again could be near impossible. There was no way she’d go to the farmhouse a third time. He wouldn’t have much to go on in the way of a warrant, either, when the only defining feature he’d seen with certainty was her hair, and he wasn’t even sure if it was natural or dyed. He needed to capture her _now,_ or else return to the station to report a failure.

C stops and scans the street. A flash of pink catches his eye and disappears into an old grocery store. He bolts after it.

The windows and doors are boarded up, but the board in front of the door has been kicked in and split open, pieces of plywood scattered around the entrance. The hole is too small for him to fit through, so C kicks it in further until he can squeeze past.

The building is dark, only lit by the light that now bleeds through the doorway. Old shelves still line the floor, some half-caved in and others crumbling. The floor is patchy and visibly sunken in some places, the walls spotted with old rainwater, the stale air smelling damp and earthy with mold.

C stands still and waits for a sound. When none comes, he reaches for his weapon and draws his line into his hand, then paces along the end caps.

Nothing.

He looks up sharply as a clatter comes from the back of the store. Pieces of a shelf clatter and slide along the ruined, cheap laminate. 

C rushes towards it, stops short at the mess and peeks out of the aisle, eyes searching for any vague sign of movement in the shadows. Still, nothing. He steps out and jogs the length of the endcaps again, and still, nothing.

This is when it occurs to him that the noise had been a distraction.

C whirls and races back towards the door, praying he’ll see ginger hair or that pink skirt again. And just as he leaves the aisle, something heavy strikes him across the temple.

He cries out, vision goes blank, body crumpling to the floor like a limp doll and his now cracked glasses flying across the room. C feels the energy leave him fast as his aura tries to make up for it; he groans, tries to sit up, reaches up to feel the bump on his head.

The light from the doorway falls across him. He looks at his shaking hand, fingers blurring in and out of focus, and realizes his palm is covered in blood.

“What did you bastards do to Pyrrha?” the Replicant demands, standing over him with her weapon held over her shoulder.

 _War hammer,_ C registers. He’s lucky it didn’t take his head off. The girl’s image blurs, splits into threes and solidifies again, and C struggles not to squeeze his eyes shut. 

“Answer me!”

What good does she suppose it’ll do her to know? Pyrrha Nikos was carted off in a box and recycled, just like every other N8 he’s ever brought in. She’s seen his uniform, she knows what he’s for. Why ask?

“You retired her, didn’t you?!” the girl yells. “Didn’t you?!”

C grunts through his teeth and gets up on his knees. He gets one leg under him, almost stands, and then the whole world sways and he goes back down.

“You aren’t even sorry,” the Replicant says. She sounds close to tears. “You retired her and you aren’t even sorry.”

“Fuck’s sake,” C grits out, which he hopes she takes to mean shut up. His head is throbbing. Blood slides down his cheek and catches at the edge of his jaw before it pools and falls to his collar.

The girl suddenly puts her boot against his shoulder and kicks him over. Vertigo makes the room spin in the opposite direction. C falls on his side and blinks rapidly, trying to line his gauntlet up with her leg— 

The girl brings her hammer down quick. The gauntlet cracks open, ammunition shattering, and C shouts in pain.

“You piece of shit N9 cops,” the girl says, then lets out a quiet sob. “You damn traitors. Pyrrha was worth a thousand of you.”

C grips his arm and drags it close to his chest. Fucks sake. He can’t help squeezing his eyes shut now. Brothers, that fucking hurts.

“I should kill you right here,” she says. Her voice shakes. For someone that just brought a hammer down on him with the strength of a grown man, she looks small and helpless in her grief. “But Pyrrha wouldn’t want that. She’d feel sorry for you. I bet she felt sorry for you right up till the end, and you don’t even deserve it.”

C scowls up at her, jaw tight. N8 models always think he cares about this. As if he could afford to care, as if he were allowed to. They always think he has an intent of betrayal when he doesn’t have any intent of his own at all. What’s hard to understand about this? He was made for a task. 

“It wouldn’t even matter,” the Replicant mutters, lowering her hammer in defeat. “I could crack your head open like an egg and it wouldn’t matter. I bet you’ve retired enough of us to make a hundred replacements. Damn you.”

While she hangs her head and sheds tears, C reaches into his coat.

His vision is still swimming, but the taser darts land. The girl drops her hammer and howls, her frame spasming hard, and then she hits the floor like a loose brick.

C sighs and relaxes for a moment. His wrist hurts like hell, definitely fractured, but not so much that he won’t be able to get her cuffed. He sits up half way, nausea rising as his vision swims again, and he gingerly digs a piece of the gauntlet out of his skin. Son of a bitch, that hurts.

A crackle of energy lights up at the corner of his eye. C freezes. He watches in horror as the Replicant slams a fist against the floor and gets to her feet, her body shimmering with electricity. She wipes at her mouth, where her teeth had sunk into her lip when she fell, then picks up her hammer and fixes him with an absolutely livid gaze.

C manages to gather up what little of his aura is left, and then the hammer comes down on his ribs.

The crack is audible. The bone and flecks of pale green light that shatter and spark up into the air. C screams and then cuts off abruptly, jaw locked up as that crackling energy jolts through him. His vision goes blank again, his ears full of static and white noise, and when his body finally stops convulsing, all he can make sense of is _pain._

The girl hefts her hammer over her shoulder, stooping over him to point in his face. “Come after me again,” she promises, “and I won’t be so nice.”

C just lets out a low cry, and that alone makes his ribs burn. Spots dance in front of his eyes. His ears are ringing. Every muscle in his body is twitching and his ribs are on fucking _fire._

The last thing he sees before he blacks out is the girls boots heading leisurely towards the door.

* * *

Awareness returns to him in foggy pulses of cognition.

It’s dark, aside from a jagged slab of dim light that makes what little he can see look hazy. Everything hurts. Everything hurts so fucking bad. He takes a breath and feels a sharp pain in his side, so much that his vision goes black all over again.

C lets out a sound that can only really be described as a pitiful whimper.

He lays there a while longer. Not long, probably—each breath feels like a knife in his chest, each second its own century. He feels out his aura and can only sense little slivers of it, which means that he’s been slowly healing for hours and will need to slowly heal for hours more. Obviously, no one’s coming for him.

He tries to move his good arm and only ends up jostling his ribs. C groans, bites his trembling lip and reaches into his jacket for his Scroll. Why hasn’t— 

Ah. Shattered. The glass in his pocket slices into his fingers, and he jerks back on reflex. Which hurts.

Fuck.

He braces himself, then pushes himself up on his elbow and quickly up to his knees— 

He sits there for a minute too, jaw clenched tight as he waits for his brain to process anything except the ache. He tries not to breathe too hard. He gets to his feet.

It takes gargantuan effort to stay upright. Beyond the fractured wrist and the broken ribs, his head is still throbbing. He can feel blood on his face, caked and dried over, the steady sting of a darkening bruise at his temple, and it can’t be clearer that he has a concussion.

He needs to get back to base.

C stumbles to the door and stares miserably at the broken plywood. He wishes he’d kicked it open more than that. He braces himself again, closes his eyes and squeezes through the gap, and the pain becomes so much that he has to lean against the grocery store wall to ride it out. Hot tears slip down his cheeks, stained red on one side. Each breath feels like a knife.

He reaches up and presses against his side gingerly, wrist protesting with the movement. The pressure makes him see stars, but at least there’s no bone poking through his skin. 

Okay. One step at a time. Okay.

It’s still raining, just a light drizzle, but with his aura so low, it’s enough to make him shiver. C leans against buildings where he can and slowly makes his way back. Dread curls in his gut as the street goes from empty to trickling to crowded again. He won’t be able to shove his way through again, and if someone tries to— 

Okay. 

C clings to the edge of foot traffic, leaning against whatever seems solid whenever he can. Street vendors stare at him warily and passersby either ignore him or give him sour looks. Each time someone bumps his shoulder, there’s another jolt of pain. He presses on, gritting his teeth and inhaling in shallow drags, and when he returns to the street where he left the Rhino, he realizes it’s already been towed.

“Fuck,” he rasps, and keeps walking before he finds half a mind to collapse.

He has no idea what time it is. He doesn’t know how long he walks. The sidewalk keeps blurring in and out of focus, street sign letters smudging together. He moves on autopilot otherwise, tries to numb his thoughts so he won’t focus on the pain, passes vendors and stores and repair shops and residences— 

He stumbles, flinches and gasps as the motion makes the pain flare up hot, only barely catches himself on the stair rails of an apartment building—

On his fractured left. C lets out an sharp and sinks down on the stoop, tears pricking behind his eyes again and god _damn,_ it hurts so fucking much. The rain is ice cold and his aura is still barely there and everything _hurts._

C closes his eyes and lays back against the stairs. It occurs to him, as he waits for his body to settle and for the low aches to take place of the knife-sharp sting, that he might die here. It occurs to him that he’s sent out no distress call, and so no one will think to look for him until morning, and no one will stop to help him, or if they do stop, it won’t be out of kindness, and the night is only getting steadily colder from here.

 _A human would probably be more upset about this,_ he thinks, as his consciousness blurs at the edges.

Some indiscernible amount of time later, C feels a hand on his shoulder.

He pries his eyes halfway open, blinks dazedly. He makes out a deep red coat with a high collar, a scruffy jawline and black hair. The stranger says, “Brothers, are you alright?”

The voice seems familiar. C tries to see who it is, but the streetlight is just above the man’s head and casts a heavy shadow over his face. 

“Gods, you’re bleeding.”

A bit raspy. Pleasantly rough. Worried. Kind, almost. He must not realize. Is C’s uniform that dirty? 

“Can you stand?”

C blinks again. His mouth feels dry. He doesn’t want to take a deep enough breath to speak. The man leans a little further into his space, and the light falls over his cheeks, illuminates pretty vermillion framed by dark lashes.

C’s mouth falls open. He wonders if he’s delirious, or dreaming.

“If you leaned on me, could you make it up the stairs?” Qrow Branwen asks, glancing up towards the door. “We need to get you out of this rain.”

C blinks stupidly. He must have a stupid look on his face. He manages hoarsely, “My…my ribs are broken.”

Qrow’s gaze falls to the placement of his hands. “Right side?”

C nods. “…Left wrist, too,” he adds.

“Shit,” Qrow says. He reaches into his pocket. “I’m going to call an ambulance—”

“Don’t!” C says quickly, then gasps and shuts his eyes again. “Don’t,” he says again, through his teeth.

There’s a pause, and then a hand on his arm. “This’ll hurt,” Qrow murmurs, then lifts Clover’s arm up and over his shoulders, gets a hand against his back, and hauls him up.

C shouts and all but falls against Qrow’s side, vision swimming as all the pain he felt going down comes back tenfold. Qrow wraps his arm around C’s waist tightly and keeps him upright, lets C catch every rattling breath he can.

“You’re going to be alright,” he promises, and damn, if his voice doesn’t sound different when it’s not coming through speakers, if his eyes aren’t kinder in person than they are through holo-filters.

C thinks very briefly about impossible, uncrossable lines, and then they start up the stairs.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Music for this chapter: [Barricade](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEX8PedezSE) by Elliot Moss and [rubyinsides](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cTCRO7xhRc) by Purity Ring

The apartment Qrow is staying in is on the third floor. This is a blessing, because it could’ve been worse, and a curse, because the stairs are a fucking nightmare. And because he spends the entirety of the trek trying not to black out, C doesn’t have any time to process the fact that he’s leaning on the very real body of the man who’s usually nothing more than a hologram in his living room.

“Here’s me,” Qrow says quietly, his grip on C’s waist tightening as he lifts his hand to the print scanner. The door unlocks and it’s the most relieving sound C’s heard all damn day; finally, he can sit down and rest.

Qrow guides him towards the couch and lowers him down gently. C gasps sharply and quickly clenches his jaw, squeezing his eyes shut until he’s certain he won’t make a sound. Qrow glances at him, but doesn’t say anything about it.

“I don’t have much medical training,” Qrow admits. “I can’t do much for you. Here…stay still and I’ll see if I can’t find a first aid kit.”

Politely, C rasps, “Thanks.”

Qrow looks at him a moment longer, then heads towards the kitchen.

While he flicks the kitchen light on and rummages through cabinets, C glances around the mostly dark living room. It’s plainly furnished, clearly not personalized aside from a small holo-photo next to the lamp on the side table, of the Harbinger members and three boys C doesn’t recognize. Qrow is in the middle of all of them, the center of a near-dogpile, plainly tired but clearly happy.

Some odd, unidentifiable thing tugs in C’s chest. He looks away from the picture. There’s a coffee table in front of the couch that’s a mess of papers and notebooks and stray pens, sheet music and scrawled lyrics that bleed into the margins. And there, propped in the nearby armchair, is an electric guitar, painted a deep, glossy red.

 _It really is him,_ C thinks absently, and then Qrow returns from the kitchen with a kit and a bowl of water.

He shoves aside some of the papers and sets the bowl and kit down, then turns towards the wall console. “Watch your eyes,” he says, waiting a beat before he turns on the light. C squints until his vision adjusts, dismayed to find that things are still blurring in and out of focus.

Qrow takes a seat at the edge of the couch. Seeing him in the light doesn’t make him seem any more real, but there’s more detail now, at least: the furrow in his brow, the piercing in his right ear, the faint scar just beneath his cheekbone. C doesn’t know how he ought to react to all of that. Or maybe he shouldn’t react to it at all.

He watches with some measure of wariness as Qrow reaches towards him then, but all he does is gingerly brush C’s bangs back from his temple. The blood makes it stick just enough to pull. It’s still the most gently anyone’s ever touched him, aside from nurses at the Atlas station. C doesn’t know how to react to that, either.

“What the hell happened to you?” Qrow asks.

That’s classified. And a little embarrassing, besides. C glances away and mutters, “Rookie mistake.”

Qrow frowns. C’s never seen him frown before. After a moment, he turns and dips a washcloth into the bowl, wrings it out, then brings it up to C’s temple and cleans away some of the blood.

C closes his eyes, brows knitting as he lets out a slow, shallow breath. Fuck, that hurts.

“Sorry,” Qrow murmurs. 

C glances at him. The nurses never say _sorry._ Qrow is still focused on his task, so C lets him be.

“I’m gonna guess you have a concussion,” Qrow says after a moment, dipping the cloth back into the bowl. “You’ve got a sizable bump there. Do you know what day it is?”

“The tenth,” C answers, then blinks and adds, “Or it was last I checked.”

Qrow smiles. Crooked, nice to look at. That is, watching Qrow perform is always nice, but seeing him this close—this _here,_ this solid—is different, somehow. It strikes him then that Qrow is pretty. Qrow says, “Not midnight yet, so you get a pass. Can you see alright?”

As if on cue, he blurs into two people, then just one again. “…I’m dizzy.”

Qrow dabs the cloth over his temple once more. C winces, then goes still as Qrow reaches up to cup his other cheek and scrubs the blood from his jawline. “How’s your aura?” he asks.

C stares at him while he turns to get a bandage from the first aid kit. After a missed beat, he answers, “It shattered…hours ago. It—” he cuts himself off, biting his lip. Even drawing in enough breath to speak hurts.

Qrow’s red eyes flit down to his ribs before his focus returns to his task. Against C’s brow, his hands are warm, gentle.

“There,” Qrow murmurs, taping the bandage down. He frowns. “We need to get you out of your coat before you start getting dehydrated.”

C knows that. He knows that and he’s been dreading it. He sits up and braces himself, starts to shrug out of it only to pause when Qrow stands up, moves to his left, and takes his sleeve.

“Keep as still as you can,” Qrow instructs, carefully tugging at the cuff. C watches his hands for a moment, then carefully withdraws his arm, flinching as the movement puts pressure on his ribs and again when his hand catches in the fabric. Qrow moves slowly, patient, and switches sides to pull the coat from C’s right arm, then folds it up and lays it over the back of the couch. C exhales and leans back, closing his eyes briefly while he rides out the pain.

He opens his eyes when Qrow sits next to him again. Qrow hesitates, then motions at C’s chest. “D’you mind?”

C shakes his head and tilts his chin up to give Qrow space. Deft fingers pluck the buttons of his vest open, and this all seems so surreal, another person putting hands on him without obligation, without cruelty.

“What’s your name?” Qrow asks.

And like that, the novelty of it is shattered. C lets out his breath slowly and realizes he’s feeling…disappointment, which is ridiculous. He doesn’t know why he let himself think— 

He looks away as Qrow carefully pulls his vest open. “I think you’ve misunderstood,” he murmurs, and immediately regrets it. There was never any telling as to how people would react once they realized. But Qrow is already looking at him, already waiting, so he finishes, “I’m a Replicant.”

Qrow raises a brow at him. “I know,” he says.

C blinks, and then feels himself flush. He must’ve meant—of course that’s what he meant. “...It’s C-L-zero-dash-three-dot-four,” he answers.

“Your name, not your serial number,” Qrow says. C stares at him. When he doesn’t answer, Qrow looks up to meet his gaze and asks incredulously, “They didn’t give you a name?”

“I…” No one’s ever asked him this before. “I’m a Nexus 9,” he explains. He feels flustered. Isn't that much clear? If Qrow recognized his uniform, doesn’t that mean his make is obvious?

“I know, I just thought that with you being a Blade Runner…” Qrow trails off, brows knitting in muted frustration. After a moment, he shakes his head and mutters, “Everyone should have a name, is all.” 

C opens his mouth, then shuts it. He’s never really thought about having a name. It hadn’t ever occurred to him to need one. He doesn’t think anyone’s ever been so openly angry on his behalf, either. This, along with everything else Qrow has done, seems like an absolutely enormous amount of kindness from a stranger…from a human, no less. He’s more confused about Qrow Branwen than ever; is this why he’d said he didn’t care if Replicant rebellions used his music, why the lyrics he sang seemed so politically charged at times, why he’d suddenly given up his Blade Runner career? Had he suddenly developed some misconception about whether or not Replicants were human beings?

There’s a long beat of silence while Qrow grips the hem of C’s undershirt and carefully shimmies it up. After a moment, he says, “I’m Qrow.”

“I know who you are,” C says softly.

Qrow looks up at him and blinks. His expression turns sheepish. “I guess every cop in Remnant knows about my track record, huh?” he says. 

_I know your music,_ C wants to say. _I’ve heard you sing._ But that seems loaded somehow, too personal, so he keeps his mouth shut.

Qrow clears his throat, resumes his focus. “Sorry,” he says in advance.

His hands are warm against C’s skin. C’s been out in the cold so long that the touch is an instant relief even as the goosebumps spring up. Qrow’s hands are slender, string-calloused, pleasant…or at least, they are until he presses lightly against C’s ribs.

C sucks in his breath, tears pricking at his eyes again. He grits his teeth.

“I’m not an expert,” Qrow reminds him, “but at the very least, I think this is a bad fracture. Nothing’s broken off. Bruising isn’t the worst I’ve seen, either. You got lucky.”

“I don’t think ‘lucky’ is the word I’d use here,” C says dryly.

“You could be dead,” Qrow points out, lifting his hand to C’s jaw again. Unsettled by the movement, C leans back as much as the couch and his ribs will allow (which, admittedly, isn’t very far) but Qrow’s fingers just settle at his pulse. “Your heart rate isn’t too fast,” he murmurs, and if he notices the way it’s kicked up speed, he doesn’t say so. “And your breathing seems alright, all things considered. I don’t think you punctured a lung.”

C doesn’t say anything. He’s still trying to interpret that little leap his heart just did. It’s not quite fear, but there’s a similar sort of anxiety or exhilaration there, some flare of nerves in his belly that he can’t quite explain.

“Let me see your wrist,” Qrow says, then adds, “Flex your fingers,” when C offers his arm. C curls his hand into a fist and winces. “Were you wearing a gauntlet?”

C nods, brows knitting as he waits for the pain to subside. “It took the brunt of the blow,” he says.

“Well…good thing, because otherwise your hand might be fucked.” He stands up. “I’m going to get some ice packs for the swelling.”

More kindness. C can’t make sense of it. He supposes he’s never really met a Replicant sympathizer, but it doesn’t stop him from being shocked at someone doing all this with no promise of reward. It would’ve been enough to let him borrow a Scroll to call the station for retrieval.

Qrow returns with two ziploc bags of crushed ice wrapped in a hand towels and two pillows tucked under his arm. C rests his bad wrist in his lap and sighs in relief when Qrow puts the first ice pack down, then glances curiously at the pillows. 

“I don’t want to drive you anywhere until your aura’s more replenished,” Qrow says, sitting next to him again. “But for now…” He reaches out again, but hesitates this time, like asking permission. Red light shimmers around his hand. 

C stares, watching with raised brows and lips parted in surprise. The color is strong, solid, indicative of a deep reservoir of energy and honed skill with its use. Is he offering to…?

When C doesn’t object, Qrow cups his jaw. The immediate rush of strength he feels is enormous, and C can’t help that he shuts his eyes to bask in it, that he sighs and relaxes into the touch. He’s seen people share aura before, but he’s always been left to rebuild his own. And this connection, this brief bond with such a bright and powerful soul— 

It seems like such an intimate privilege, and one C will likely only experience once. He savors it.

“What’d you say your number was?” Qrow asks.

C opens his eyes. “CL0-3.4,” he answers.

“CL0-3.4,” Qrow repeats. He hums. “CL0-3.4…Clover.”

C blinks. “What?”

“Clover,” Qrow says again. “If you wrote that serial number down, it’d look like Clover. Could be a name, if you want one.”

“Most just call me ‘C’.”

“Do you like that?”

He pauses.

“You don’t have to use ‘Clover’ if you don’t want to,” Qrow says, shrugging. “Just thought I’d suggest it.” He softens, gentle but insistent. “You should have a name.”

Clover. _Clover._ C thinks on that for a while. And then, as Qrow stacks pillows, lays him down and puts ice on his ribs, he thinks on uncrossable lines, on the kindness of a stranger, and he doesn’t have the slightest clue how to respond.

* * *

C jolts awake sometime in the middle of the night to a hand on his shoulder, snatches the person’s wrist and starts to sit up in one fluid motion. Pain explodes in his side.

“Woah, woah, easy,” says a voice, rough with sleep. “It’s just me.”

C blinks, glances around in confusion: a dimly lit room, a messy table, a couch-turned-bed and pillows propping him up. He’s—right. Qrow’s apartment. Qrow Branwen. Right.

He lets go of Qrow’s wrist, wincing.

“Didn’t mean to startle you,” Qrow says apologetically, then yawns and crouches beside him. “I have to wake you up every few hours to make sure your concussion isn’t getting worse.”

C’s eyes flit over his face. Qrow looks entirely serious. Is he going to do this all night? Sacrifice his own sleep to make sure C can wake up?

“How are your ribs?” Qrow asks.

He feels like he’s still dreaming. He feels half here in this little apartment and half caught in a crowd, half here and sweating under a throw blanket and half surrounded by rickety shelving. Qrow Branwen has a terrible case of bedhead and is in a too-big t-shirt and sweatpants, and he’s asking about C’s ribs. “They still hurt,” C answers.

“How about your wrist?”

“Better. Still hurts.”

“Flex your fingers for me?”

A request, not an order, like it would make him happy. He’s not even getting paid for this. C closes his hand into a fist and inhales sharply at the sudden ache. 

“Tell me your…uh, serial number, your job, and place of work.”

Clover squints at him a little, then lets out his breath slowly and shuts his eyes. He’s checking for slurred speech and cognition, then. “C-L-zero-dot-three-dash-4, Blade Runner for the Remnant Police Department, Atlas District.”

“Good.” The floor creaks as Qrow rises, and C feels him straighten the blanket. “Go back to sleep. I’ll come check on you again in a little while.”

There’s a faint clicking sound. Behind his eyelids, C watches the lamplight vanish. Qrow’s footsteps disappear down the hall and into the bedroom before C opens his eyes again, staring up at the ceiling in the dark.

He can’t make sense of this.

* * *

“I’d cook you breakfast,” Qrow says, handing him a glass of water, “but I don’t know if you’ll need surgery.”

“It’s alright,” C rasps. Qrow smells noticeably of aftershave and shampoo. “Thank you.”

Qrow checks his scroll. He’s already showered and dressed, ripped up jeans and an old band t-shirt that’s plainly well-loved. C wonders if he’s going to rehearsal. “I can drop you off at Atlas Station,” he says, then frowns. “Are you sure I can’t take you to a hospital?”

“No hospitals,” C says quietly, then takes a long, slow drink.

Qrow sighs. “Alright.”

“You should call a cab for me, anyway,” C says after a moment. “There’s a warrant out for your arrest.”

Qrow meets his gaze, then looks towards his guitar. He doesn’t ask what C thought about _Big Metal Shoe._ He says, “I’m not afraid of Atlesian cops.”

C thinks about that photo he saw on the news, of Qrow cuffed and grinning, like he’d either known he was untouchable or didn’t care if he wasn’t. He almost laughs, and it shows at the edge of his mouth. “Maybe not,” he says, “but they’re afraid of you. You make them look bad.”

Qrow looks at him again. His eyes are so curious, no hint of disdain there, no hatred or disgust. “Not you?” he asks, taking C’s glass once it’s empty.

“There’s nothing you can do to make people think any worse of me than they do already.”

“It’s not exactly helpful to your precinct to advise me to stay away from police stations,” Qrow points out.

“No one gave me orders to arrest you,” C says.

Qrow’s brows go up. There’s a beat of silence, and then he laughs. 

C stares at him.

“Alright, I’m not exactly going to argue against not going to jail,” Qrow says, raising his hands in amused surrender. “I’ll call a cab, if that’s what you want.”

C nods.

They wait in relative silence. C lays his fractured wrist in his lap and puts a hand against his ribs. It still stings like a bitch, but his aura, although not fully restored, is leagues above what it was the night before. If he’s lucky, they’ll give him painkillers and a wrist cast and call it a day, no scapels required.

Qrow sits in the armchair, guitar propped near his leg, scribbling furiously in a notebook.

C tries not to stare. He’s been staring at Qrow a lot since he got here and he feels weirdly embarrassed about it. If Qrow looked up and caught him watching, C thinks he might have it in him to be mortified. So instead he is left with having to glance up on occasion, to pretend he is thinking deeply on something else, to act uninterested.

The scratch of Qrow’s pencil stops. C looks away. There’s a pause, and then Qrow asks, “Hey…are you safe?”

C looks at him again.

“Considering how I found you,” Qrow elaborates, “I’m guessing your mission, whatever the hell it was, went south. You gonna be safe if you go back to the station?”

There’s a long moment where C doesn’t know what to say. What a question to ask, if he’s safe or not. “If you’re asking if they’ll retire me, that’s reserved for baseline failures,” he answers carefully. “That much hasn’t changed since you quit.”

Qrow’s brows go up in surprise, then knit, and he looks away. He says, “Yeah, well…just making sure.”

Another beat of silence. C realizes he should say something else. _Are you safe?_ He feels warm suddenly. He feels his cheeks heating up. The only other person that bothers with his well-being is the Commissioner, but that’s different, isn’t it? Doesn’t he have to ask? “I appreciate the concern,” he says finally, and then, because the misunderstanding bothers him, “Even if I wasn’t safe, I’d still have to go back.”

Qrow leans back in his armchair and frowns. “You don’t have to go back at all,” he says sharply, “safe or not.”

C blinks, taken aback, then scowls and looks away again. It’s one thing for N8’s not to get this, but a human? To offer him a choice and pretend that he could take it is cruel. It seems especially so after…after everything else Qrow has done. “I have to return to my station,” he mutters. “I have orders.”

“What do orders matter if your life is at stake?” Qrow demands.

These same fucking questions. “Look,” C says.“I was made for—”

“You weren’t made for anything except other people’s greed,” Qrow interrupts, “and you don’t owe them shit.”

That’s a dangerous kind of thing to say. That is dangerous and cruel and untrue. C feels something tug in his chest and he realizes he’s upset, feels his throat tighten as he says, “Nexus 9’s can’t—”

Qrow’s Scroll chimes. The conversation halts, and Qrow pulls it from his pocket, then murmurs, “Cab’s here.”

C isn’t sure if this is perfect or horrible timing. Not that it matters. It’s not his job to convince humans of anything, be it his humanity or lack thereof. He exhales and lets it go, braces himself to get up, only to halt when Qrow steps to him and takes his arm.

“Easy,” Qrow says quietly, hand on C’s back to keep him steady as he pulls him upright. “There you go.”

The pain isn’t much, compared to last night. After what one might classify as an argument, C hadn’t expected the same show of kindness. 

“Thanks,” he says, polite.

“Sure,” Qrow replies, and he sounds like he means it.

Going down the stairs is still shit, but significantly better than going up. His aura not being freshly shattered helps, too. This makes him briefly think on the way Qrow’s aura felt as it coursed through him; because he doesn’t want to think on that, he turns to thinking about how the width of Qrow’s shoulders fits nicely beneath his arm; because he doesn’t want to think on _that,_ he turns to thinking about Qrow’s hands on his back and on his chest, keeping him steady despite the fact that C never asked him to.

His thoughts have never seemed so wildly out of control before.

Qrow opens the cab door for him and carefully helps him in. C bites back a gasp and still ends up hissing through his teeth, laying his coat across his lap and shutting his eyes while he waits for the throbbing to pass.

“Would you please take this fine officer back to the Atlas station?” Qrow drawls. C opens his eyes and finds Qrow still leaning over him, eyes fixed on the driver, who’s giving them a narrow-eyed glare in the rearview mirror. “They’re expecting him.”

The driver’s eyes flit to C before he scoffs and turns back to the road. _That’s_ the kind of behavior C expects from a human.

And speaking of the unexpected, Qrow asks him, “You gonna be okay?”

C meets Qrow’s gaze just briefly before he has to look away. He’s not sure why he feels embarrassed, or ashamed, maybe. Usually, he avoids eye contact to keep out of trouble, but this— 

“Yes,” he answers. Then, genuinely, “Thank you. For helping me.”

“My pleasure,” Qrow answers, putting a hand on his shoulder. “See you around, Clover.”

C stares at him, and Qrow shuts the cab door, and C thinks on that all the way back to the station.

* * *

ATLAS POLICE DEPARTMENT HEALTH CLINIC  
9:34 AM NOVEMBER 11TH, 2049   
  


“Can you explain to me,” Commissioner Ironwood says, with visibly thinning patience, “why in Brothers’ names you decided it was a good idea to go out on a mission _injured?”_

It’s odd to see the Commissioner in the clinic. C’s wrapped up in a hospital gown while machines monitor his aura and his vitals, his wrist set in a cast and the bed propped up enough to take pressure off his ribs. He lifts his chin out of respect, though he doesn’t meet the Commissioner’s eyes. “I didn’t want to hinder the investigation, sir,” he answers, which isn’t entirely untrue.

“And how well did that work out for you, Agent?” Ironwood demands. “The suspect escaped, you got a police vehicle towed, and now you're out of commission for a minimum two weeks.”

C swallows. “Yes, sir.”

“You were gone for almost twenty-four hours!” Ironwood snaps, tossing his hand up as he starts pacing the length of the room. “What was I supposed to think when I got a report of a Rhino being towed and no driver in sight? I thought you’d been killed!”

C almost opens his mouth to say something and closes it. This isn’t the first mission he’s ever failed—won’t be the last—but the Commissioner doesn’t usually react like this. The commissioner doesn’t usually raise his voice. The Commissioner doesn’t usually visit the clinic.

Ironwood stops pacing and pinches his brow, one hand on his hip. C can’t help thinking that this is very unlike him. Ironwood points at him sternly and says, “You’re suspended. Two weeks. I don’t want to see you in uniform a minute sooner, and I will not be assigning you any missions without a doctor’s written approval. Is that clear, Agent?”

C blinks, then nods.

“Is. That. Clear?” Ironwood repeats.

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. I swear on the Brothers—” Ironwood cuts himself off as his Scroll rings in his pocket. He pulls it out and scowls at whoever is on the other end, then points at C again. “Do not neglect to report any more injuries, you hear me?” he says sharply. “Go home as soon as you’re cleared.”

C doesn’t have time to respond before Ironwood whirls away to answer the call. As he storms down the hall, C hears his fading voice say, “What is it this time? …Brother’s sake, Qrow, I don’t have time for any more of your shit! I have more important things to worry about than whether or not you approve of…”

C’s heart slams in his chest. He tries to sit up and immediately regrets it, pain flaring over his fractures. He strains to hear more of the conversation, unbearably and uncharacteristically curious, but Ironwood is too far away now. And…ah, hell, he’s dizzy with enough pain medications to have misheard, anyway. And the way his pulse kicked up is just…surprise. Because he misheard. And it wouldn’t matter if it _had_ been Qrow on the phone again, anyway. The likelihood of C seeing him again is miniscule. It wouldn’t matter if he _did_ see him again. This thing in his chest is just lingering nerves, soon to pass. 

He’s released from the clinic after a day of monitoring and heavy sleep. He takes his baseline. It wavers, but holds steady; testers chalk it up to physical pain responses.

He does not get a bonus.

* * *

The trek up the stairs to his apartment hurts, but his aura is nearly full, at least. 

Someone has written on his door again. His apartment seems terribly empty. C turns on the news just to hear a voice and goes to shower. The clinic has given him a cast cover for his wrist, but the water pressure still stings at his side. Getting in and out of his clothes with no assistance makes everything ache.

Two weeks of doing nothing, of being alone with his thoughts. C can already feel the restlessness setting in; few punishments could be worse.

He props up his pillows and crawls into bed, wincing all the while. He stares up at his ceiling and thinks about scrawling notebooks and red guitars, absently considers calloused hands at his jawline and impossibly striking eyes. He thinks about aftershave, about throw blankets. He thinks about clovers.

It’s not until he ventures down to the corner store for milk three days later that he reaches into his coat pockets, that he finds show tickets and a crisp white business card, emblazoned with two green foil cogs and nothing else.

* * *

_[Transcript: Interviewer Rose Cerise sits down with Harbinger frontman Qrow Branwen over coffee. May 17th, 2048]_

**Rose Cerise:** I’m honored to be your first interview since you began putting out new music. 

**Qrow Branwen:** Well. I’m sure it’s a much bigger story now.

 **RC:** [laughs] That I can’t deny. Is there a reason you refused to do interviews before now? You didn’t seem to shy away from them during your days with STRQ.

 **QB:** I didn’t really have anything to say.

 **RC:** A lot of your fans would disagree! The songs you initially put out seemed very personal, no?

 **QB:** Yeah, I guess they were. But that’s different.

 **RC:** How so?

 **QB:** Like you said, they were personal. I wasn’t sending a message to anybody. I didn’t have an agenda or anything like that. For me, those songs were more like a diary than anything else.

 **RC:** There’s rumor going around that some of the songs are about your relationship with Summer Rose. Is that true? Can you elaborate on that?

 **QB:** …It’s true. Summer was my partner back when, uh…when we were Blade Runners. And we were tight before that, in STRQ. She was one of my best friends. I miss her every day.

 **RC:** Is she the subject of Bad Luck Charm?

 **QB:** Ah…partly, I suppose. Summer’s passing…it’s still a huge source of grief and regret for me, but it’s not the only instance that I’ve felt like that. I’ve always been a beacon of bad luck.

 **RC:** Oh! What makes you say that?

 **QB:** [laughs] I’m not trying to sound like a sad sap. My semblance is Misfortune, that’s all.

 **RC:** It sounds like you’ve struggled with that in the past. 

**QB:** Yeah. I still struggle with it. It’s not the easiest semblance to control. I still, uh…sorry.

 **RC:** Don’t be.

 **QB:** I still blame myself for a lot. Stuff I know doesn’t make sense. Summer was always good at making me see reason, but after we lost her…I guess I spent a lot of time thinking that was my fault, too. Bad Luck Charm was my way of dealing with all that, after I went through a lot of unhealthy coping mechanisms.

 **RC:** Have things gotten better for you? You look well, and you’re performing again.

 **QB:** I mean, I didn’t really mean to get back into show biz. Like I said, the music I was putting out was more for me than anybody else. Even Armed and Ready was personal. I wrote that one with one of my nieces. Summer raised her.

 **RC:** So there’s no Replicant sentiment attached to that song?

 **QB:** I didn’t say that.

 **RC:** I see. I suppose that brings me to my next question, then…All Things Must Die is by far your most controversial release yet. There’s a lot of talk about it that doesn’t put you in the most favorable position. Some say the lyrics are ironic, but others say they harken back to your past as a Blade Runner. Can you shed a little light on that? 

**QB:** All Things Must Die is about a disregard for life. It’s not me preaching about the good Blade Runners do for society or any bull**** like that. [Laughs] Shoot, can I say that?

 **RC:** [Laughs] We’ll see what the producers say, but probably not. But what caused your view on Blade Runners to change? You were one for about eleven years, no?

 **QB:** I was. And I made a lot of mistakes back then. I still regret all the things I did. I’ve written a lot of songs that’ll never see the light of day, trying to erase that guilt. But nothing really comes close, and nothing can really make up for it. I think it’ll always be a part of me.

 **RC:** Would you consider yourself an ally of the Replicant movement? Is that why you haven’t condemned the use of your music during recent riots?

 **QB:** [Laughs] You’re going to get me in trouble, Ms. Cerise. I think every living thing in this city deserves a free life. Doesn’t get much more complicated than that.

 **RC:** I see! Well…I’m told I have to let you go around this time for rehearsals. I’m sorry I didn’t get to ask you about your new band members.

 **QB:** You would’ve needed the whole interview if you wanted me to start talking about those kids. Harbingers is full of incredible talent.

 **RC:** I’m sure they’re glad to have a pro there to guide them!

 **QB:** Ha! I dunno about all that, but I’m happy to be there all the same. 

**RC:** Of course, of course. Thank you so much for seeing me!

 **QB:** My pleasure.

_[End Transcript]_


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Music for this chapter: 
> 
> [Windswept](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmq5yUa6e6s) by Crywolf and [Fear of Falling Asleep (Henry Green remix)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUf49Q5BkkE) by TENDER
> 
> **WARNING FOR FICTIONAL SLURS AND POLICE VIOLENCE**

Now that he's left with all this restless energy from not being at work, C’s gotten very good at cooking.

Okay, he’s gotten good at eggs and various types of pasta that take very little effort to actually make, things that come in little pre-seasoned store-bought packets that say “add 2/3rds cup of milk” and “butter or margarine” and “simmer for 10-12 minutes”. It’s still better than something he throws in the microwave before calling it a night.

This does, however, mean he goes through a lot of eggs.

He’s been off work for a week. His ribs have healed enough that he can breathe without issue, and move with only a little pain. His wrist is almost healed entirely. He can carry his groceries on his arms without too much discomfort. He can get up the stairs to his apartment just fine.

Unless someone blocks his way, of course.

He’s seen this group hovering around his apartment before, two men and one woman who give him nasty looks when he comes home from work sometimes. They linger on the stairs with other neighbors sometimes, smoking cheap cigarettes and sipping cheaper rum, and he’s seen them eye him sometimes when he finds new writing on his door.

“Ain’t seen you in uniform lately, skinner,” one of the men says, tilting his chin up and blowing out smoke. “You get fired or something?”

“Man, come on,” says the other, smacking his friend’s arm with the back of his hand. “You know when these things stop having a use, they kill ‘em. Ooh…” he tilts his head at C, playing at apologetic. “Sorry.  _ Retire.”  _

C keeps his eyes downcast. It’s easier to stay out of trouble that way. Humans don’t like to make eye contact with things that look like them but aren’t. “Please let me pass,” he murmurs.

The woman holds her cigarette between two fingers and takes a long drag from it, then exhales a cloud of smoke. C wrinkles his nose just slightly as it wafts in his direction.  _ Cheap. _ She says thoughtfully, “They might not retire him.”

“You don’t think so?” the second man asks.

“What for?” the woman replies. She flashes a cruel smile C’s way. “He’s pretty enough.”

This earns guffaws from her companions. C, meanwhile, clenches his fists at his side briefly before exhaling and forcing his hands slack. “Please let me pass,” he repeats, firmer this time.

“You gonna do something if we don’t, skinjob?” the first man says. C tries not to let his jaw set too obviously. He’s heard the word a thousand times, from near a thousand humans. This one seems to be the type to say it every chance he gets: a sign of petty insecurity, displayed plainly in the overbearing effort to exert power over another.

“He won’t do shit,” the woman sneers. “Just like he won’t do shit about the door. You know they need orders for that.”

“Can’t do shit but to his own kind, right?” the second man sneers, then reaches out for C’s jacket. “Can’t do shit to real people—” 

“If you lay hands on me, I will have grounds to arrest you on the charge of assaulting an officer,” C states sharply, finally lifting his chin enough to meet their eyes. “And if you continue to stand in front of my home, I’ll have grounds for harassment charges. Now please let me pass.”

All three of them freeze, then scowl and slowly slink away from his door. C squares his shoulders and watches them until he’s sure they won’t try anything at his back. One of them mutters something vicious under their breath and spits on the floor. 

C calmly—casually—puts his hand against the scanner and slips inside his apartment; as soon as the door closes and the heavy lock slides shut, C presses his back against the wood and tries his best to breathe.

It’s not—he isn’t  _ scared, _ and he isn’t angry, it’s just that…he’s used to this, obviously, it’s a constant, it’s been this way since he was born and he’s quite used to people sneering at him or trying to invade his space or spitting at him or attempting to hurt him or—

C shuts his eyes and exhales slowly, then takes off his coat and moves to the kitchen to put his eggs in the refrigerator. And because his hands are still shaking, he gets his own cigarettes from the top of the fridge and digs around in the kitchen drawer for a lighter. 

He lowers himself to the couch carefully, leans back against the cushions and winces as he gets comfortable. He puts the cigarette between his lips and flicks his lighter until smoke wafts up into the air, inhales until he can taste the flavor at the back of his tongue.

His apartment is quiet. This is one of those precarious moments in the night when most are settling down to sleep or leaving for a night shift, when he’s left in relative peace to think on things he probably shouldn’t. Through the walls there are the sound of footsteps, closing doors, soft murmuring if he listens hard enough. And he has been lately, because there’s only so much news he can take in an evening, and sports bore him, and his usual evening entertainment is…

C glances at the tickets laying on the coffee table. He’s spent a lot of time this past week thinking about Qrow Branwen and not listening to his music, which is  _ usually  _ the opposite of what happens. And it’s not that he hasn’t thought about it—he’s thought about it plenty, even caught himself humming songs just to be rid of the silence—it’s just that for some reason, the idea of watching Qrow’s performances again feels…dangerous. Risky. He isn’t sure what this music might make him feel now and he’s afraid to find out.

He doesn’t know why that is. Surely having met the man in person can’t account for that much.

He hasn’t decided what to do with the tickets yet. The reasonable solution, clearly, is to throw them away before he’s caught with them, but for some reason, he hasn’t been able to make himself do it. He doesn’t know why Qrow gave them to him in the first place; it’s not like he can go, or like he’d have anyone to go with, if he  _ wanted  _ to go. Which he doesn’t. And hypothetically, if he  _ did  _ want to go, that sort of thing would be suicide. Going to see Qrow live would be suicide. He would be risking retirement just for one night of heavy bass and Qrow Branwen’s furious songs in his ears.

C takes another drag and closes his eyes, tilts his head back against the couch while the smoke rolls over his tongue. He parts his lips, lets it out slow, lets his mind wander into aimless silence. He could stay in this little pocket of a moment for a long time, he thinks, soft and unperturbed and alone. 

A knock on his door has C’s eyes flying open. He sits up, barely noticing the twinge in his ribs as his gaze pins itself to the bolt on his door, still shut tight. He doesn’t say anything.

Another rap of knuckles, then, hesitantly: “C?”

Some tension falls from C’s shoulders, and he quickly gets to his feet and slides the deadbolt back. The door slides open and Commissioner Ironwood blinks at him in surprise, like he hadn’t expected a response.

“Sir,” C answers. He’s off duty, so he doesn’t stand straight. He should stand up straight. It’s never occurred to him to not be militaristically vigilant in the Commissioner’s presence. But then…the Commissioner has never come by his apartment before, either.

There’s a notable missed beat before Ironwood clears his throat, face going carefully neutral as if he’d been a bit flustered and managed to recover quickly. C says nothing of this. Ironwood states, “I came to see how you were doing.”

This leaves C a bit taken aback. He’s never heard of the Commissioner going to visit suspended officers, or even injured ones. He supposes he’s never talked to anyone to find out if this happens, but— “I’m fine,” he says, which isn’t exactly a lie.

“Good,” the Commissioner replies, then falters again. “I realized—I’m late, I know that. You seem to be healing nicely. I just realized there wasn’t anyone around to…to take care of you.”

C blinks. This sounds almost as if the  _ Commissioner  _ had come intending to take care of him, had C needed it, but that’s ridiculous. That’s beyond absurd. Unsure of how to interpret it otherwise, C only answers carefully, “I managed alright, sir.”

“Good,” the Commissioner repeats. There’s another awkward moment of silence. “May I come in?”

Another unexpected thing to ask; C is so startled that he steps back from his doorway before he can really think about whether he wants to say no or not, though he supposes it doesn’t really matter if he’d been inclined to. Ironwood steps in, so tall that he has to duck under the doorway a bit; C isn’t used to having anyone else in his apartment, and the space looks abysmally small with a guest this size taking up so much space. Ironwood sticks his hands in his coat pockets and looks around, and C supposes that he must be used to much nicer accommodations than a tiny living room with peeling paint and an old, well-worn couch with sunk-in cushions.

“Can I get you anything?” C offers eventually.

“No, thank you,” Ironwood answers, then amends, “A beer, if it’s not too much trouble.”

C couldn’t very well say it was too much trouble. He turns towards the kitchen, and it’s at that moment that he realizes the tickets are still on his coffee table, right next to that business card emblazoned with green cogs.

His heart jolts with hard panic, breath skittering over a sharp inhale. He snatches the tickets up as he passes and stuffs them, crushed, into his pants pocket. If the Commissioner notices, he doesn’t say anything.

When C returns with a beer in hand, Ironwood is sitting on his couch. He looks comically big against it. He’s still glancing around like he’s looking for something, and it makes C’s hair stand on end. Has he left out anything else incriminating?  _ Is  _ there anything else incriminating here besides something that has to do with Harbingers and rebellious music?

“Have you lived here long?” Ironwood asks.

“A few years,” C answers, smoothly for the way he feels close to trembling. “I lived in another apartment before this.”

“Didn’t like it?”

“Got kicked out when a human tenant wanted it.”

Ironwood shoots him an almost indignant look, then casts his eyes away. C watches his gaze land on the coffee table and stills, breath catching all over again. There’s nothing else there besides the remote and a poetry book C’s been slowly working through, set next to his mostly empty ashtray. 

The Commissioner says, “It doesn’t seem like you’re here very much.”

He isn’t. Is this a comment on his lack of personal items, of visible hobbies or interests? All he really does is work, come home, eat, watch the news (or a concert) and sleep before he wakes in the morning and starts all over. He hands Ironwood the beer in silence.

Ironwood takes it. His movement stalls a bit before he pops the can open carefully, gentle. He’s not wearing his gloves for once, and shiny, well-kept metal gleams even in the dim light coming from C’s kitchen. Ironwood asks, “You smoke?”

C realizes he never put down his cigarette. “Not often,” he answers, looking down at it with some measure of guilt while smoke wafts accusingly between his fingers. “Just—” He catches himself. “It’s herbal,” he substitutes. “No nicotine. I don’t smoke enough to hinder my performance.”

“I wasn’t implying otherwise,” Ironwood says a little quickly, then takes a sip of his beer.

“Oh,” C replies, then, politely, “Do you want one, sir?”

Ironwood shakes his head, then taps his chest with his right hand. Metal clangs, quiet and muffled, beneath his clothes. “I can’t,” he says.

C pauses. He forgets, sometimes. Ironwood covers it up with his uniform and his combat prowess has never suffered. C’s never seen him express pain with respect to his prosthetics, either. He supposes he hasn’t been looking.

He puts his cigarette out and leaves it half finished on the ashtray.

Ironwood watches him, then says sheepishly, “I hope I’m not intruding.”

“No, sir,” C says. Actually, he’s a little glad for the company, despite the accompanying nerves. It’s not so quiet, and it’s better than the last human interaction he had, besides. “Did you need to see me about something?”

“...Not about work, no.”

_ The tickets? Branwen?  _ “Something else?” C presses.

“I didn’t have any more reasons than what I gave at the door,” Ironwood answers pointedly.

C feels jumpy. He doesn’t know why. He hasn’t technically done anything wrong. He never asked for the tickets and he isn’t going, and he couldn’t exactly choose who helped him in off the street when he was bleeding and battered. 

He thinks about the phone call Ironwood had gotten last week in the infirmary. For a split second, he wonders if he’d heard right after all.

Ironwood shifts his weight on the couch and moves out of the middle. “You should sit,” he says gently.

C realizes his features have pinched a little, and Ironwood likely interpreted it as pain. He schools his face neutral and takes a seat, raking his hand through his too-long bangs as the awkward quiet descends again.

“You’ve been eating alright?” Ironwood asks suddenly. “And you’ve been taking your medication?”

C stares at him. “Yes, sir,” he answers. Does it really matter? Any wounds have been long disinfected and all he’s got left is mild pain-relievers and anti-inflammatory meds. His aura’s working through it faster than anything he could take in a pill. By the time he gets back to the station, he’ll be well past fit to work again.

“Good,” Ironwood says for the third time. He taps his finger against the beer can, then says, “You need a haircut.”

It’s not an order. In fact, it’s very near a question. Atlas has always allowed for some measure of free expression, so there’s never been any hair length regulations, but C’d had his hair cut short immediately after being made, before he’d even been shipped off to the Atlas Station, and has kept it that way since. He says, a bit embarrassed at appearing so disheveled, “Yes, sir.”

“You’ve had time this past week,” Ironwood says curiously.

C hesitates, then drops his gaze to his lap, where he laces his fingers together restlessly. “The barber I’d been going to quit,” he admits. “No one else in the shop…um. He was the only barber I knew that would take Replicants.”

“I see,” Ironwood says stiffly. C doesn’t answer. After a moment, Ironwood sets his beer down on the coffee table. “I know a barber,” he says.

C looks up sharply. “Sir,” he says, feeling some small distress about the fact that he’ll have to explain, “With all due respect—”

“She’ll take a Replicant customer,” Ironwood says firmly. “I’ll go with you, if that would ease your mind.”

“I—” C starts, then, incredulously, “With me?”

“If you want.”

“Sir—”

“It’s no trouble,” Ironwood insists.

It must be trouble. It  _ must  _ be. He shouldn’t even be here at all. It’s a Tuesday evening and there will be reports on his desk in the morning. Ironwood has to be up early. He shouldn’t even be here. To take time out of a schedule that hardly allows for relaxation…

“It’s no trouble, C,” Ironwood repeats.

He sounds kind. This makes no sense. C says helplessly, “…Alright.”

“I’ll call her tomorrow, then,” Ironwood says. He hesitates, like he wants to say something else, then suddenly stands up. “Well, it’s late. I should head out.”

“Sir.” C rises to see him to the door, wincing as he pulls himself up from the couch.

“You don’t have to—” Ironwood starts, then frowns as C straightens and squares his shoulders. He closes his eyes and sighs, then rubs the back of his neck. The metal looks starkly shiny against dark hair. “I didn’t intend for this to be a formal visit,” he admits. “You can call me James.”

Surprise flits across C’s face before he can wrangle it in. Addressing his superior by his first name seems unfathomable. It’s never even crossed his mind to do so; he’s not sure he’s ever even  _ thought  _ of Ironwood’s given name since their first introduction. “Sir…” he tries, and comes up short for what he could possibly say. Why would Ironwood try to make it seem like—

“It’s more comfortable for me,” Ironwood says then, and it leaves C wondering if his thought process had somehow shown on his face. “I prefer ‘James’ when I’m off duty. It helps me keep work life and personal life at least a little separate.”

Personal life. C doesn’t know why the Commissioner might come to see him on personal time. He clearly feels awkward here in C’s little space, and C can’t make sense of why he might want to spend even  _ more  _ time around him than is required. A personal visit. A haircut. James.

C clears his throat. He feels…spooked, almost. Caught unawares. He says, “If you insist, sir.” A pause. “James.”

And James’s expression softens then, almost imperceptibly; his brows smooth out, his mouth turned up at the edges just slightly, some measure of warmth in his eyes. It’s a look C has been on the receiving end of before, but for some reason, this time—here, in his apartment, where James has shown up uninvited and unexpectant—C feels forced to pay it more mind than he has in the past.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” James says, and he’s slipped out the door before C even makes it halfway to an out-of-habit salute.

* * *

The neighborhood James’s barber is in is notably more wealthy than what C is used to. So is James’s car.

It’s not that C doesn’t get paid well. It’s just that people don’t like selling things to Replicants. And C doesn’t mind walking everywhere, really. It’s good exercise. So being in a car that isn’t a district issued vehicle is…strange. And quiet. The radio plays soft music and James has barely said anything, and all C can manage to do is keep his gaze locked on the dashboard.

Out of the corner of his eye, he catches James sneaking glances at him. He wonders if James is checking for any signs of trauma or distress, and carefully keeps his face neutral.

“Will you cut it the same way?” James asks after a moment.

“Yes,” C answers indifferently.

“You could change it up. Mei’s a good stylist.”

Meifeng Bai, the woman’s name is. Been working at her own shop for a few years now, James said, and welcomes Replicant customers, though in this area, they tend to be scarce. C is having some trouble thinking that Ms. Bai would be truly welcoming of anything that would make her human customers turn their noses up, but James has never had reason to lie to him before, so he doesn’t object.

Instead, he answers, “There isn’t much point in customization in this line of work.”

James makes an odd noise, half-laughter and half-incredulity. “Customization,” he repeats.

C doesn’t reply. He’s never given terrible thought to the way he looks outside of being neat and tidy, as is required of him. He was made to look as though he fit into uniform, and it’s never really occurred to him to change that. And anyway, he’s not an aesthetic model. He isn’t. So it doesn’t matter what his hair looks like, so long as it suits an officer.

James looks like he wants to say something else, but doesn’t. The rest of the ride is silent, except for radio commercials.

Despite the surrounding wealth of the district, the barbershop is relatively small and quaint. The floors are made to look like hardwood and the walls are painted dark, contrasting garish neon prints set in acrylic blocks: retro sunsets, pour art, the city, and geometric shapes C can’t make sense of. It’s very 2010’s, which he only knows because he’s visited bars with similar looks to find targets, and other than two other customers taking up the attention of two young barbers, it’s relatively empty. 

A sensor above the door indicates it’s been opened, and a bell sound chimes over speakers that play old pop music just quietly enough as to not interrupt conversation. One of the barbers looks up and greets James by name, or rather, by his surname, then calls into the back for Ms. Bai. 

No one spares C a glance. He’s not in uniform, so he supposes that’s to be expected, but it’s been a while since he walked into a room and got mistaken for a human.

The woman that walks out has white hair that falls to her calves even with the high bun twisted at the back of her head, dark eyed and olive-complected, and more built than C would expect of a hairdresser. She dresses in loose-fitting shades of blue, pink, and white, sleeves pushed up to her elbows and socks bunched beneath her knees. She isn’t terribly short, but she looks it when she rushes out to greet James with a friendly hug. “Oh, James, you’re back so soon!” she says. “Your hair’s barely grown out at all.”

“Hello, Mei,” James says warmly. “Actually, I’m just here with a coworker. This is Agent C.”

And the woman pauses, and turns to look him over, and C knows, of course, that his lack of a name has given him away.

Which is fine.

“Hello, C,” she says after a moment, far more kind than he’d expected.

C blinks in surprise, then recovers and nods out of respect. “Ms. Bai.”

“Call me Mei,” she insists, then beckons him over. “Come sit.”

C glances at James, who only tilts his chin down a little expectantly and then goes to sit on the waiting bench to read a magazine. Having expected more of a fuss and not sure what to do now that he hasn’t gotten it, C follows Mei and sits in silence while she ties a bib around his neck.

“What would you like?” Mei asks, combing through his hair with her fingers. “You’ve got nice hair, and it’s grown out enough that I could do plenty with it.”

C hesitates. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees James lower his magazine just a smidge. He says, “Just a half inch trim, please.”

Mei glances up to meet his eyes in the mirror. “No new style? I have a catalog you could pick from, if you’re not sure.”

For some reason, the question embarrasses him. “No,” he says quickly, then, politely, “Thank you.”

“…Of course,” Mei answers, then turns his chair away from the mirror and picks up scissors and a fine-tooth comb.

James flips another page of his magazine. 

While Mei works and makes small talk with James, C sits quietly and tries not to think on much. He feels like if he does enough considering, then it will show on his face, and the little jolt of fear he’d felt the day before with the show tickets on his table is still quite fresh in his mind. With the Commissioner—with James sitting so close by…

He shouldn’t be thinking about the Harbingers show anyway. He can’t go. He’ll end up watching it from home on his couch as always, and that will be that. And in any case, even if he could somehow go, it wouldn’t be like…it wouldn’t be anything. He wouldn’t get to see Qrow Branwen again, not up close. Not that he wants to. There would be no close proximity, no gentleness— 

C feels his cheeks turning faintly pink and decides to focus on the soft  _ snip  _ of Mei’s scissors, of the feeling of short hair falling against his cheeks.

“You’re all done,” Mei says after a while, rotating his chair around so he could see his reflection. “How is it?”

It’s fine. He looks the same as always. It’s a tiny bit longer than he’s used to—not by much, certainly not enough to be outside of his standard, but that can be remedied with his next hair cut, when he gets it trimmed on schedule.

He feels, inexplicably, a tiny flare of disappointment.

“It’s good,” he compliments. “Thank you.”

Mei waits for him to say something else. When he doesn’t, she says, “Close your eyes, then,” and holds her hand up near his hair.

C closes his eyes. There’s a gust of cool air that carries all the hair trimmings away from his neck and down to the floor, and then Mei carefully unties the bib and lifts it away. Another gust sends a stray lock away from his jeans; her semblance, C realizes, as the wind comes straight from her palm. “Up you get,” she says. 

She tries to come off cheerily, but there’s a false note in her voice. C feels a sort of tension line his shoulders as he stands. He wonders if she’s as comfortable with Replicants as James had said. “How much?” he asks. 

“No charge,” Mei says firmly, folding up the bib and laying it across the back of the chair. Before he can object, she says, “Pay me for your next cut. This one is free.”

C closes his mouth after he realizes it’s been hanging open. Finally, he says gratefully, “Thank you. I appreciate it.”

“My pleasure,” she replies, but there’s a heaviness in her eyes when she meets his gaze.

Mei says her goodbyes to James with a notably more friendly demeanor, and makes more small talk with him while C waits patiently by the door. She mentions her lover, their children, asks about a camp that James’s friend is running. It’s going well, James tells her, and just recruited a new member hardly two weeks ago.

In the car, James asks, “Did she do alright?”

“Yes,” C answers. It’s true. It’s true. He doesn’t know why he feels like this is the wrong answer. After a moment, he adds, “She was nice.”

“Mei’s been through a lot,” James says cryptically, “but she’s always been sweet.”

C briefly glances over at him as he drives. The radio plays an advertisement for a new DiJi brand called Joi, the most customizable AI companion to hit the market. James changes the station.

* * *

C hangs up his coat. He rubs shampoo and conditioner through his hair and his shower sprays him down. He looks in the mirror. He looks the same. He cooks noodles for dinner and sits on his couch and he smokes. He drums his heel on the floor, restless; he opens one of Harbingers’s concerts from the year before but doesn’t press ‘play’.

He thinks about the tickets. He thinks about calloused hands and cologne and stubble and tickets.

He makes a terrible, terrible decision.

* * *

He’s late.

The venue is small. A poor choice on the band manager’s part; Harbingers is popular in Atlas, and the venue is likely packed tight with wealthy fans who either don’t understand Qrow’s lyrics or choose to ignore their meaning in favor of guitar riffs and angry drum beats. People unlucky enough to miss out on tickets crowd around the door outside, hoping to hear music bleed through the brick or catch a glimpse through the glass, while hired security guards stand at the door, tall and imposing.

Rain comes down in thin sheets, light enough that he barely feels it against his hair. He’s dressed casually: a t-shirt and jeans, old Chucks and a high collared jacket, and no one looks at him twice. C pulls a ruined, crumpled ticket out of his pocket and hands it to the bouncer, who smooths it out to look it over and lets him past a velvet rope.

The opening act has just walked off stage. C hears his own heartbeat thundering in his ears and then realizes it’s drums. The short hallway leading to the showroom muffles the sound, the cheers blurring the opening guitar riffs, and by time C pushes the double doors open to slip into the crowd, Qrow has already started singing “Rising.”

The show is general admission. Fans press as close to the stage as they can, elbow to elbow, eyes alight and hands in the air. C’s briefly pleased to note that there’s fewer of wealth here than he’d initially assumed, though he supposes that’s to be expected given the ticket price. And this is the last thought he has on that subject, because the energy in the room is so overwhelming that he can suddenly think of little else but pressing closer, too.

His heart thuds in time with Ruby Rose’s drum beats; lightning races down his spine with the riffs of Yang Xiao Long’s guitar; goosebumps rise along his skin with each melodic chord of Weiss Schnee’s keyboard; his ribs buzz with each thrum of Blake Belladonna's bass.

And there in the center, already flushed with the heat of stage lights, stark against the bright LEDs and artificial fog in his ripped jeans and cut open band shirt as he pours his soul into the microphone, is Qrow.

Seeing him here feels different than it had before, in a way. Here in this dense space, Qrow seems connected with every person in the room, not like someone just for C’s eyes, not close and strangely intimate and gentle. He is brilliant and open and thunderous, and C feels like that’s unfair, somehow. And despite this, he pushes his way into the middle of the crowd, his body coming alive piece by piece.

The audience is animated, already jumping and dancing in place, cracked glow sticks and bracelets waving off beat. Everyone is pushing and shoving and no one seems to mind, and C is left standing there with no idea what to do. This is not for him. This has never been for him. This energy, this elation, this music—he doesn’t know why he came and he knows that he can’t make himself leave. He doesn’t know how to dance and he shouldn’t even be here, but some small, tiny voice in the back of his head confesses that if he could look into those soft cherry eyes just once more, he could be content.

Qrow sings the final note and draws his guitar from his back, fingers plucking out fast notes that overlap Yang’s and sends the crowd going wild as it closes out with a burst of smoke and color. C can’t help tearing his gaze from Qrow in brief intervals to glance at his surroundings. No one knows he’s a Replicant here, and yet he still feels on edge with each body that brushes against his.

“How’re we doing tonight, Atlas District?” Qrow asks, stealing his attention again. The crowd answers in cheers and applause. C feels awkward just standing there and starts to clap slowly, late. On stage, Qrow grins and turns one of the tuning keys on his guitar. “Been a while since we’ve been here, so I hope I’m seeing some new faces among the familiar.”

Another chorus of raucous cheers. Qrow plucks a string of well known chords, and noise fills the room again. C’s breath catches; he knows the opening notes of “This Will Be The Day” like the back of his hand. “I’m glad we can all be here tonight. I’ve been getting in trouble lately—” a pause, a wider grin as the crowd laughs. “So to celebrate the fact that I’m not yet in handcuffs—”

More laughter. Qrow leans back from the mic to laugh at himself too, then leans back in and finishes, “—I figure we’ll play a few old favorites first, and then I’ll bring out something new for you. How’s that?”

At the prospect of a new song, the crowd screams louder than ever. Someone behind C lets out a whistle so shrill that the sound hurts. 

“Alright,” Qrow says softly, then places the opening chords again. Yang plays in tandem, then takes over as Qrow begins, and it lights a little spark in C’s chest. By the time Qrow makes it to  _ a fairy tale that’s full of charm,  _ C finds himself nodding to the beat, and when Qrow points his mic towards the audience and a huge chorus of  _ legends scatter  _ fills the room, he very nearly brings himself to sing. Each song loosens one more bit of inhibition from him; Qrow sings  _ Let’s fall in love with life and just be free  _ and a pang of longing bursts beneath his ribs, Qrow sings  _ I’ll stand with you shoulder to shoulder  _ and some sense of injustice prickles along his nape; Qrow sings  _ Trust love  _ and his throat closes up.

After this, the set goes silent for a moment. Qrow slings his guitar across his back and nods at Weiss, who starts playing a soft trail of notes while Qrow steps away from the microphone to get some water. There’s a low energy thrumming through the crowd, a blend of excitement and a desire not to disturb the quiet, only disrupted by an occasional, inexorable whoop. Qrow tilts his head back to drink and C finds his gaze helplessly pinned to the lines of his throat, on the cut of his shoulders and the swell of his chest beneath that ruined t-shirt. This is not for him. Some foreign desire settles in his stomach, followed by a swift stab of guilt that makes his breath catch.

Qrow sets his water bottle down and heads back over to the mic, rolling his neck as he walks. The piano notes fill the air on easy repeat. Qrow drops his gaze, as if being seen has suddenly left him vulnerable, then admits, “I wrote and rehearsed this within the span of a week, so it’s probably not my best performance.”

C feels a tremor run through his body. He thinks about sitting on Qrow’s couch, watching him scribble away in a notebook, listening to the scratch of his pencil. He thinks about their brief disagreement, about the way Qrow had still tended to him so carefully afterwards, about the…about what Qrow had called him. He feels like his heart could stop. He feels like it’s never beat faster.

“Bear with me,” Qrow murmurs, and the last high, twinkling bar plays before he sings, “I’d understand…if you’d rather not…talk about this.”

C draws in a breath. The crowd is still.

“There’s always a chance…” Qrow’s voice wavers, and he closes his eyes, “…that we might remain…in ignorant bliss…”

The cymbals crash as Qrow cries, “We are lucky if our lives can avoid it,” and then the chorus floods through the room like a tidal wave, the question it asks pressing but unanswerable. The crowd screams and jumps so suddenly that it’s a wonder the building doesn’t shake, but C feels frozen in place. The second verse digs deep and C’s nails dig into his palm; Qrow’s fingers fly over the frets of his guitar during his solo, and the bridge drags something sharp up and out of C’s lungs. By the time the final chorus hits, he realizes it's a sob.

Qrow demands, “Who will you be when you're afraid? And everything changes? Will you see a stranger? Feel proud or betrayed?” and all the music cuts off abruptly, immediately replaced by the audience’s roar. C can still only just stand there, feeling like his heart is trying to leap up and out of his mouth. The song is beautiful. It is beautiful and too familiar. He thinks about Qrow writing this after taking care of him all night, after asking for his name. Did he do this on purpose? Is this why he’d slipped tickets into C’s coat pocket? It couldn’t be. It can’t be. It feels like Qrow has shoved this song into C’s hands and now he’s left standing here not knowing what to do with it. Could he do all this for a stranger? Was not leaving him to bleed out on the stairs not enough?

This can’t be for him.

And just like that, the moment is shattered with the sudden sound of sirens, and C’s stomach drops as red and blue flashing through the windows snatches his attention. 

“Cops!” someone in the crowd shouts, and then everyone is panicking and shoving to get out any entrance they can find before the police make it to the door. Caught in the middle and caught unawares, C struggles just to stay upright as others push past him. Cops force their way into the showroom and grab what few fans are left.

One of the officers stalks towards him, and C realizes with a flash of terror that he should’ve tried harder to be the first to tear through the door.

“I’m with the Atlas police!” he shouts, stepping back as the officer reaches out. “I’m police!”

The officer snatches his wrist so hard that it makes nearly absent pain flare up again. C jolts back, and the officer quickly swipes his boot under C’s heel and sends him crashing face down to the floor. C cries out as the officer twists his arm behind his back and tries in vain to buck him off, only for the man to slam a knee against his back.

“I’m police!” C screams. “I’m a Blade Runner!” 

The officer only twists his arm again and drags the other up to cuff him while he cries out in protest. More officers pour into the room, and C glances frantically towards the stage. The girls are already fleeing backstage, keyboard and guitars in hand, but Qrow lingers, red eyes fixed on C in open horror while Ruby desperately pulls at his arm.

C feels a sharp prick at his neck. His vision swims. “I’m a Blade Runner…” he tries weakly, and Qrow vanishes, and everything goes black. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Meifeng is based off one of my favorite childhood books called The Long Haired Maiden, about a woman who angers a mountain god by showing her village where the god was keeping their water. Her first name means 'beautiful wind', an allusion to the way the mountain god carries her off, and her last name means "white", after the color her hair turns with the weight of keeping a secret.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Music for this chapter: [What Will Become Of Us?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi3miEuV2Z0) by Deadlife, [Watchtower](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joqtHyOibQk) by Michael McCann, and [LBL](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ba2ZoaeWYyQ) by Cospe.

* * *

**The Remnant Times**

* * *

**  
Police Raid Harbingers Concert in Atlas District**

**Posted by: Cyril Ian  
** Nov. 21, 2049 Updated 10:12 a.m.   
  


Last night, the ever-controversial and fiercely popular band Harbingers performed at Alsius Avenue, despite lead singer Qrow Branwen’s arrest warrants and high tensions in Remnant following the release of the recent audacious hit, “Big Metal Shoe.” 

At approximately 9:35 p.m., Atlas police stormed the venue and began arresting concert goers without warning. An anonymous tip revealed that the raid was executed with the purpose of arresting Branwen, though it’s unclear as to why this led to the arrests of audience members. Branwen himself, as well as the rest of Harbingers’s band and crew, escaped and haven’t been seen since.

Since the arrests, protesters have taken to the streets and demanded that the concert goers be released. Atlas Precinct Commissioner James Ironwood made a public statement early this morning, saying that he will be personally reviewing the cases from the incident to see to it that no one will be unjustly charged, and that all officers involved in wrongful arrests will face consequences. However, due to the sheer number of arrests, he was unable to give an estimated time as to when this process would be complete. 

“These cops think that they can do whatever the hell they want,” stated an anonymous interviewee who reported the incident. “This whole stunt was just a way to scare people away from Harbingers shows, because they don’t like that their songs are turning the public against them. But the message is already out there. People are already looking at them in a new light. It’s time for change.”

* * *

POST-TRAUMATIC BASELINE TEST  
REMNANT POLICE DEPARTMENT: ATLAS DISTRICT  
AGENT CL0-3.4  
11:15 AM November 21, 2049 

“Agent CL0-dash-3-dot-4, let’s begin. Ready?”

His arm hurts. His face feels bruised still. Does the sedative slow down aura regeneration? He’s never thought about how it worked before. “Yes, sir,” he answers, lies. His voice trembles, almost imperceptibly. 

“Recite your baseline.”

The camera lens focuses, shifts. The alarm rings out. Somewhere, in a room he can’t see, a computer makes a graph of his vital signs. He says, “A blood black nothingness began to spin. A system of cells interlinked…within cells interlinked, within cells interlinked.” His throat strains. He continues, “...Within one stem. And dreadfully distinct against the dark, a tall white fountain played.”

“Cells.”

“Cells.”

The second alarm rings. The interviewer asks, “Have you ever been in an institution? Cells.”

“Cells.”

“When you’re not performing your duties, do they keep you in a little box? Cells.”

A bolt of terror strikes him in the chest. He can’t keep still. “Cells.”

“Interlinked.”

“Interlinked.”

“What’s it like to hold the hand of someone you love? Interlinked.”

 _String-calloused hands on his jaw, at his temple, deft fingers plucking open the buttons of his vest, pressing over broken ribs, over his pulse, he shouldn’t—_ “Interlinked.”

“Within cells interlinked.”

“Within cells interlinked,” he repeats.

“Dreadfully.”

“Dreadfully.”

“What’s it like to be filled with dread? Dreadfully.”

“Dreadfully.” Is this dread? Dread seems easy. Dread is knowing you have to walk back to the station when everything hurts and burns. Dread is knowing there are two flights of stairs. This is—

“Do you like being separated from other people? Distinct.”

He’s always been—“Distinct.”

“Dreadfully distinct.”

“Dreadfully distinct.”

“Dark.”

“Dark.” The room is painfully white. His eyes flit away from the camera once.

“Within cells interlinked.”

“Within cells interlinked,” he says.

“Within one stem.”

“Within one stem.”

“And dreadfully distinct.”

He’s always—“And dreadfully distinct.”

“Against the dark.”

“Against the dark.”

“A tall white fountain played.”

He swallows. He says, “A tall white fountain played.”

A pause. It must only be a few seconds. It feels like a minute. 

“You’re not even close to baseline,” the interviewer snaps.

The breath C didn’t realize he was holding crashes out of his mouth.

* * *

The Commissioner’s office is bigger than his living room, he realizes.

The door is shut, the opacity of the big bay windows cranked so high that the city lights outside are barely visible. Holo-screens hover above the left-hand side of the desk, displaying a kicked-up heart rate, elevated blood pressure, rapid respiration, darting eyes and the nervous, jumping line of C’s throat. The Commissioner laces his fingers, mouth hidden behind his knuckles, eyes out of focus while he thinks. 

C stands silent and shaking in the middle of the room, refusing to meet Ironwood’s eyes in some desperate, unspoken plea for mercy.

After a long moment, Ironwood says quietly, “This is the worst baseline failure we have on record, C.”

C flinches.

Ironwood exhales and rubs his hands across his face. “What the hell were you thinking?” he asks tiredly.

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what he was thinking. He was thinking about feeling free for just a moment, and he was thinking that he needed to see Qrow again, but these feelings don’t make sense to him, and he doesn’t dare put them to words. 

“I don’t know, sir,” he admits, throat so tight that it burns to talk. He wants to cry; he doesn’t remember a time when he’s ever cried without being wounded. 

There’s a long pause, and then Ironwood stands up. C has never been afraid of him before, but he’s immediately reminded of people waiting outside his door, and it takes everything in him not to step back. But Ironwood only turns away to stand at the window, more out of habit than for the absent view, folds his arms behind his back and looks out as if he can still see the details of the city beneath them. “I didn’t think you would go,” he murmurs.

C looks up sharply, startled. “…Sir?”

Ironwood doesn’t answer. Instead, he lowers his head and exhales slowly again. “That raid was not supposed to take place until after the show was over,” he says, voice still low, “and civilians were not supposed to be the targets. The corruption in this place runs deep. I phase out who I can whenever I’m able, but people don’t want to be police officers anymore unless they have a personal desire for power. And the only other option contributes to…supply and demand. I can only do so much without crippling my force and getting myself scrutinized.”

C opens his mouth, eyes flitting over Ironwood’s form before shutting his mouth again in confusion. He’s not sure what all that has to do with his arrest, or why Ironwood is even telling him this. It seems like something only someone trusted should know, and he’s…he’s a Replicant. “I don’t understand, sir,” he manages.

Ironwood turns halfway to him, eyes downcast. “I want you to understand that my choices here are limited,” he says. “I have to keep up appearances. I have to make decisions that don’t jeopardize my position here. If I lose it, I can’t—” He cuts himself off suddenly, blinking and lifting his chin as if remembering himself. 

After a moment, he reaches across his own chest and up to strike at his own temple with metal fingers. 

C jolts in surprise and lurches back. “Commissioner?!” 

Ironwood just winces and lifts his flesh hand to the left side of his face, jaw hardening in pain as his gloves come away bloody. “This conversation never happened,” he says firmly, finally turning to face C fully. His voice is even lower than before, only for C’s ears, and he speaks slowly, like he wants C to remember this word for word. Blood runs down his temple slowly and drips against blinking lashes. “What happened was that I called you in here for evaluation, and you hit me, stole a Rhino, and escaped while I was dazed. I couldn’t send a team after you for ten minutes. Do you understand?”

C’s chest heaves. He feels like he might panic. His heart is hammering and his palms are sweaty and there doesn’t seem to be enough air in the room. “James?” he asks, and his voice wavers, high pitched.

“Do you understand?” James repeats.

C takes another step back. And another. He can’t breathe. Adrenaline thrums through his veins and everything’s _wrong._

“Go,” James says urgently, and C turns on his heel and flees.

The halls seem bigger and longer and more crowded than it’s ever been. C tries to keep his gait brisk but steady, tries not to draw any attention his way. Each pair of eyes that glides over him in passing feels like a thousand accusatory stares. He walks faster. People refuse to make space for him as always and each shoulder that brushes his has him flinching. He breathes off-rhythm. The hair on the back of his neck stands up. He feels chased. 

The transport bay doors loom within his sight lines. Fear tugs a tiny thread of his composure loose and suddenly he’s unraveling.

He breaks into a sprint.

“Hey!” “Watch it!” “The hell—” and a few hurled slurs barely register. Everyone he shoves past falls. He has always kept restraint around humans before. He’s not allowed to hurt them. He’s never been allowed to show his strength to anyone but other Replicants. To N8’s. The hallway swells. People move out of his way. He doesn’t think he’s ever run so fast in his life. He doesn’t think he’s ever been terrified like this, like teeth might close around his ankle if he slows. The fear pulses sharp in the forefront of his mind and washes out everything but _move._

He rams his shoulder into the transport bay doors and the metal caves around him, rips open and sparks. It cuts. 

Alarmed shouts from nearby officers ring out. Some recoil from the wreckage and trip, and one flinches as C jumps clear over them. An officer returning a Rhino looks up at the noise and reels back as C guns for the bike.

 _You hit me. You stole a Rhino. You escaped._ Orders but not orders. James told him to go and C can’t do anything else.

He leaps onto the Rhino and kicks the gas pedal before he even settles in the seat. Officers are shouting, the bay doors are closing, blood rushes in his ears—

C banks hard and forces the Rhino onto its side. The gravity propulsions protest until there’s nothing to push against, and C slides clear out of the doors before the heavy doors come down and seal. The Rhino rights itself as soon as he lets it, and he takes off down the street.

Everything blurs. The wind rushes by and pulls at his coat, rakes his hair wild and bites at his throat. His eyes refuse to settle on any one thing, darting from surrounding cars and passing civilians as he searches for the clearest route. He doesn’t even know where he’s going. He can’t go back to his apartment. He can’t go back to James. Where else has he ever been offered refuge?

The traffic is thick. C presses his knees close to the bike and weaves it between cars. Each angry honk he gets in response makes him flinch. For what seems like both an eternity and a split second, he drives aimlessly, taking whatever streets won’t require a stop.

He tears through a cross-section. He sees the oncoming traffic careening towards him only in his peripherals, flinches so hard that he slams his foot down on the gas pedal and narrowly clears it before he skids to a breathless stop. The cars swerve, a mix of propulsion and tires squealing on asphalt and metal grinding out shearing creaks. 

C registers, late, that he’s trembling. His muscles feel all locked up. He takes a lungful of air and shuts his eyes, hangs his head over the dash and tries to drown out the indignant yelling of drivers and startled pedestrians.

Fuck.

Another breath. _Go._ He tightens his fists on the handlebars. _You stole a Rhino._ He needs to ditch this thing.

C revs the engine and rights the bike, then takes off down the street again, ignoring all the people shouting angrily after him.

* * *

He leaves the bike and his Scroll in an alleyway, and not long after, hears sirens. Manta pod cruisers fly overhead as C slips away unseen, holding his coat collar high to hide what little of his face he can. 

He is still shaking. He’s still thinking about the way the blood gathered at the edge of James’s eye. He is still thinking about being put in a box.

He starts walking.

Atlas seems particularly cold, or perhaps lingering sedative effects are still slowing down his aura regeneration. C shivers, pulls his coat a little tighter. It’s only now that he feels the cuts that crashing through the transport bay doors left on his arms, the sting and the uncomfortable half-wet sensation of soaked-up blood.

He wants to huddle somewhere, but in his manic driving, he’d left the relative safety of his neighborhood and the surrounding slums. There’s nowhere for him to stop here, where the streets are tipped just enough towards the side of wealthy that wouldn’t welcome a fugitive sleeping all tucked up against the apartment buildings. The patrolling Manta’s would flag him down immediately.

Instead, C finds a nearby fire escape and climbs up to the roof.

The cold is even more bitter up this high. The air is hazy with light rain and city heat, tantalizing and unavailable and far off. He only has refuge here for the moment; the Manta’s will be patrolling low to look for the Rhino, and until they find it, the rooftops will be safe.

C rubs his hands together and cups them around his mouth, exhaling to try to warm his fingers. And still his heart. It hasn’t stopped pounding just yet and part of him thinks it never will. He lowers his hands and looks at them, eyes flitting over the scar left against his thumb joint from when that N8 girl had smashed his gauntlet. 

_Is this what it felt like when I chased her?_ he wonders, and then, because the thought makes his stomach churn, he pushes it out of his mind, shakes his head to clear it, and takes a running leap to the next rooftop. For now, all he can do is keep moving; it’s the middle of the day and he doesn’t know how long it might be before the Mantas might think to look up.

He tries not to think about who James might have to send for him. There were not a great abundance of Blade Runners capable of taking a target like C down. The thought makes him shudder. _Target._ He had told Pyrrha Nikos that they were different, before. N9’s were not made to be targets. _I am not supposed to—_

C guesses he’s done a lot of things he’s not supposed to, lately.

He keeps to the roofs. Some jumps he only makes narrowly. It’s cold; his muscles lock up, and every time he has to scramble to catch himself against sloped shingles or pull himself up from an edge, his wrist aches, his shoulder burns, and his ribs sting. He walks, and he leaps, and he keeps his hood up, and he walks, and he walks, and he walks.

He only stops to rest after the sun slips beneath the horizon. Hungry and exhausted, C crowds against the corner of a building’s parapet and draws his knees up to his chest for warmth, the rain from the night before seeping into his clothes. Neon flashes across the rooftops as advertisements play, a constant drone of noise in the back of his mind while C desperately tries to doze.

Music makes him jolt awake. C processes “Caffeine” before he realizes where it’s coming from; the building across the street isn’t quite a skyscraper, but it’s enough stories to show off a hundred foot AI display. C sits up to stare at it, blinking in confusion before he remembers his surroundings, before he remembers his circumstance, before he recognizes a voice. 

The music quiets, and Qrow Branwen, doused in shimmering blues and vibrant pinks that wash the world in a violent clash of purple, says, “Thank you so much for streaming my music!”

C blinks again and slowly gets to his feet. It’s one of those interactive hologram AIs, only meant to generate revenue, or in this case, traffic. It’s not even a recording, not even really Qrow. Harbingers has never put out advertisements. Fans followed Qrow’s unabashedly confrontational social media so religiously that he never needed anything more than album art to promote his work, and his songs spoke for themselves, with a raw honesty that corporate sponsored stars could only dream of imitating.

This AI has it all wrong. It’s dressed palatably, neat jeans and a crisp button down, sleeves folded at the elbow, the only jewelry present Qrow’s signature cross earring dangling at his jaw. His hair and beard are too well kept, likely modeled after a photo a paparazzi journalist caught him on a nice day, and his expression—

The expression is awful. Blank-eyed, stiff-smiled, false and over-friendly like a pretty commodity with easily digestible packaging. The AI sees him, tilts its head, beams at him, plastic, dispassionate. It leans forward and reaches a hand out, spanning all the way across the street until its fingers hover at the edge of the roof, enticing; it says sweetly, “Hey, stranger. Why don’t you come see me?”

C blinks, and then he tightens his fists. The anger wells up sharp, the frustration smothering. This is not Qrow. This is nothing like Qrow. And he doesn't understand it, how they could mimic him down to every pale shade of pink in his eyes, to the sweet baritone of his voice, and still get his demeanor so impossibly wrong. And therein lies a new frustration: this Qrow isn't real _,_ and the real Qrow might be worse. Wasn't he the reason everything was falling apart? If Qrow had not sang for him. If Qrow had not slipped tickets into his pocket. If Qrow had not woken him throughout the night, if Qrow had not cleaned the blood from his temple, if he had not carried him in from the cold—

 _Come see me,_ said the AI with Qrow’s face, and so he does.

* * *

It takes him all night.

He’s careful and quick to dive into the shadows whenever he sees the headlights of a passing vehicle. He is still freezing, still hungry. He’s never had a need for carrying cash before and can’t risk leaving a trail. 

The only reason he remembers a general location is because he’d paid close attention to his surroundings during the cab ride back to the station. For safety reasons, that is. But since he can’t backtrack from there, it’s still slow going. The streets look different in the night, and the night he’d been through before, he hadn’t been particularly focused, and he can hardly tell which apartment building was which when so many look the same.

He isn’t sure what makes him pause to rest at building _4._ Intuition, perhaps. C stops to tilt his head back and exhale in frustration at the sky, and when he looks down again, something catches his eye. At the base of the concrete stairs, he crouches and finds washed-out specks of blood in the pavement, nearly unnoticeable. 

He heads inside.

Two flights of stairs. Third floor. He winces at the memory, new aches nagging in the back of his mind. Two flights of stairs, third floor, Qrow’s shoulders beneath his arm, Qrow’s body slotted against his. He remembers feeling woozy. He remembers the half-dried blood and knife-sharp pain. He remembers—

Apartment 13. There’s a few splatters of blood in the carpet that no one’s managed to get out yet. He’s been here before. This is where everything went to shit.

C bangs his fist against the door.

From the other side, there’s silence. C holds his breath. It occurs to him, late, that Qrow may have moved from this location already in order to avoid being caught. He considers breaking in, considers that no one would think to look for him here, no one would think there was another apartment he would retreat to, and besides…

Footsteps, then. Cautious ones. The anger bubbles up again; he isn’t even sure why he’s here, not really, he doesn’t know what he could possibly _get_ from this. But he is confused and ruined and Qrow has been a slow-burning catalyst, and he thinks it only fair that he demand answers. The footsteps get closer, pause just on the other side of the door, and then there’s the heavy click of the lock opening.

The door slides open with a faint hiss. C’s eyes widen as he comes face to face with two shotgun barrels set atop a folded blade before he looks up and meets cherry red eyes. Qrow blinks, mouth falling open as he lowers his weapon, then blurts, “Oh my gods. Clover!”

And just like that, all of C’s anger washes out from him like a candle doused in water.

“Are you—” Qrow starts, then leans out the doorway, looks around, and grabs C’s arm. “Get in here.”

He pulls him inside before C can object. Or rather, before C can recover. He hadn’t planned out what he was going to say, exactly, but now he feels speechless. Being in this apartment when he’s clear-eyed and relatively healthy is strange. Qrow’s hand on his arm is strange. Nothing about this situation is normal.

Qrow leans his sword against the wall and locks the door again, then turns to face him, features stricken with worry. “Are you alright?” he asks, stepping closer.

C takes one step back out of surprise. Qrow stops. He’s only wearing sweatpants. C has roused him out of sleep yet again; it’s 4:00 in the morning at best. His shoulders look broader bare, the cut of them sharp, There’s a thick scar just beneath his ribs, his chest and arms dusted with smaller ones not visible from the stage. C wonders briefly how he hadn’t noticed them the first time he was here and then realizes it’s because he’d been too busy staring at Qrow’s face.

Qrow presses, “Are you hurt?”

The question snaps C out of his thoughts. “I—” he manages, then swallows and says, “No.”

“I saw you…” Qrow starts, then presses his lips together and exhales, shoulders dropping. “I saw you get arrested.”

The memory makes something in C’s chest tighten. _His face against the dirty floor, the knee in his back, the distant cries of alarm and outrage, Qrow’s eyes. The bumping elbows, the music, the bass, the drumbeat. The song—_

“I wanted to look for you myself, but the city’s crawling with cops,” Qrow says, rushed, rubbing his arm and glancing back at the door. “Has anyone been following you?” 

There’s a beat of silence then. C has a million different questions on the tip of his tongue, and he has no idea where to start. 

“Clover?” Qrow asks, and C settles on something.

“Why do you keep calling me that?” he asks sharply.

Qrow looks taken aback. “I—”

“This is your fault,” C accuses. “You did something to me.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Qrow objects.

“You did something to me!” C repeats. He turns away and steps further into the apartment, raking a hand through his hair. “You stuck those tickets in my pocket! And ever since you brought me here, I’ve been having all these…these thoughts!”

“What thoughts?” Qrow asks, stepping closer again.

“Bad thoughts! I felt—you made me feel like I could—” he jolts and whirls as Qrow touches his elbow, swats his hand away while his heart thuds hard in his chest. “Stop it!” he snaps. “Why do you keep trying to make me feel human?!”

Qrow’s brows knit. “You _are_ human.”

“I’m not!”

“Clover—”

“That’s not my name,” C snaps. “I don’t have a name. You can’t keep humanizing me.”

“Why are you so determined to believe you’re not a person?” Qrow demands.

“Because I’m not,” C says firmly. “I’m artificial. I’m not real.”

“You can’t seriously still believe that,” Qrow says, exasperated. “I didn’t do anything to you except help when you were hurt.”

“The tickets—”

“Wouldn’t have mattered if you didn’t already want to come to the show,” Qrow interrupts. “I haven’t done anything to you."

C opens his mouth to retort and finds that he hasn’t got a reply. Flustered now and only growing more frustrated, these aren’t _answers,_ these aren’t the right _explanations,_ he whirls to start pacing and argues, “Yes, you did! That song at the end, it made me fail my baseline! You did something to me and now I’m going to be retired—”

“Clover,” Qrow says sharply, grabbing his shoulders and forcing him to stop. C freezes, caught in more ways than one, shoulders tense and his fingers curling into half-fists, eyes wide and flitting over Qrow’s determined expression.

Qrow says gently, “I haven’t done anything to you. The people who made you lied to you. You were _always_ capable of feeling like this.”

C struggles to find something to say again. He opens his mouth and his throat closes up; he opens his mouth and nothing comes out. 

Qrow holds his gaze for a moment, leaves C drowning in vermilion before squeezing his shoulders. “We can’t stay here,” he says finally. “Give me a minute to get dressed and I’ll take you somewhere safe. Alright?”

C blinks, takes a short inhale before his breath catches. He’d come here for answers, and now he has more questions than ever. He’s confused and lost and Qrow seems intent on leading him _somewhere,_ and C knows in his gut that this is a dangerous, freeing thing. 

“Alright,” he rasps, brows furrowing.

Qrow nods and lets him go, then disappears down the hall and into his bedroom. And C is left standing there alone in the living room, thinking about fury and kindness while he toes at some unspeakable lines, slowly realizing that perhaps those lines aren’t so uncrossable after all.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Music for this chapter: [Where To Begin](https://youtu.be/3ny7ZvAcJ10) by Adam Watts, [Risky Business](https://youtu.be/n9WDxrzknlE) by Zhu, and [Stay Hollow](https://youtu.be/m73-fDp7GNE) by Ekali with mossy.

Qrow comes out dressed a few minutes later, and everything still feels very much like a dream.

Nothing of the last twenty-four hours seems real. Being arrested doesn’t seem real. Being marked a fugitive doesn’t seem real. Being turned loose by the very man who was supposed to mark him for retirement doesn’t seem real.

Qrow doesn’t seem real. The concert feels far away, false; C has seen his shows from his living room a million times, has watched Qrow’s hologram sing songs that inspired riots a million times, and now here he is in Qrow’s living room, in the flesh, pondering over it.

He feels like he could throw up.

“Do you have anything to change into?” Qrow asks, stepping back out as he shrugs into his coat.

C blinks. He has nothing. Possibly, he’ll never have anything. “No,” he admits. 

Qrow stares at him for a moment as he buttons his coat. “You haven’t stopped anywhere for supplies?” 

“No.”

“You’ve been missing for almost sixteen hours,” Qrow says incredulously. “Have you rested at all?”

C opens his mouth to say _yes, I rested on a roof for an hour,_ then blinks. “…How did you know that?” he asks.

Qrow’s brows go up, then knit. “It’s a long story,” he answers, looking away. “And I promise I’ll explain, but first we need to get you out of here. Take off that coat. I’ll get you something else.”

C starts to ask another question, but Qrow’s already disappeared into his room again. 

Sixteen hours. That was…oddly specific. 

Qrow returns quickly, just as C has laid his coat across the arm of the couch. He offers C a hoodie, then says sheepishly, “I wish I had something warmer for you, but I don’t have many winter clothes.”

“N9’s aren’t as susceptible to cold as humans are,” C says automatically. Qrow frowns. For some reason, the reaction sends a little sting of shame through him, and C drops his gaze.

“Here,” Qrow says again, gently, stepping closer and putting the hoodie into C’s hands. C takes it this time and pauses to look at it; it’s old and well-worn, one sleeve white and one black, and _Atlas Academy_ is stamped on the back in white, vintage lettering. Which is weird. C is fairly certain Qrow is from the Vale District.

“If I know this damned district,” Qrow says with a faint air of bitterness as C pulls it over his head, “some cameras probably caught sight of you on your way here, so keep your hood up and your head down.”

C nods anxiously and pulls the hood up with shaking hands. He’s starting, slowly, to feel overwhelmed with this again. Will he have to keep running like this for the rest of his life? Will the rest of his life be short? What will happen to Qrow for helping him when they’re inevitably caught? His breath catches. Retirement. _Retirement._ He had risked it going to the show and he was risking it again now. He should’ve kept moving. He shouldn’t have come here. He shouldn’t have—

Qrow takes his hand. C startles. Qrow says, “Come with me,” and pulls him towards the door.

His hand is warm, solid. Guitar-calloused. Kind. C remembers these hands at his temple and his jaw, at his ribs, and for just a moment, his worry is overtaken by a strange flutter in his belly.

Qrow takes him down the stairs and to a different exit than the one he came in, which leads to a parking lot at the back of the building. They stop at a plain gray car, small and unassuming, old enough to have tires instead of gravity propulsions. No trackers in it, then. Qrow lets go of C’s hand to climb into the driver’s seat, and C curls his fingers around the empty space left behind.

Qrow pulls his Scroll from his pocket as he starts the car. C buckles his seat belt as he watches him scroll through contacts before holding it up to his ear and shifting the car into drive.

“Hey,” he says when the person on the other end answers, turning the car into the street and hurrying to meet the speed limit. “I found him.”

C's heart stops in his chest. His palms feel sweaty, suddenly. The urge to flee skitters up his back and seizes at the back of his neck, his blood suddenly running cold. Qrow wouldn’t—no, that didn’t make sense. He wouldn’t have written that song or taken care of C if he was just going to…no. He wouldn’t do that. Would he? Would Qrow really—

“He's safe,” Qrow replies after a pause. “...Yeah. We're on our way now. Get a team ready. There might be cops.”

C realizes he’s holding his breath and lets it out shakily. Qrow glances over at him once, and C abruptly realizes that he’s staring, and that his fists are balled so tightly that his knuckles have gone white. He relaxes his hands.

“I haven’t called him yet,” Qrow continues. “I’ve just…got a bad feeling, so we’re moving as quick as we can…Yeah. I will…You too.” 

For a moment, C keeps silent, fidgets, tugs on the sleeves of the hoodie. They’re oddly long, and fit nearly to his knuckles. The fabric smells like Qrow’s cologne, but faintly, like it rubbed off from his other clothes. Finally, C asks quietly, “Who was that?”

Qrow glances at him again, then turns his eyes back to the road. The slight pause is enough to hint that he doesn’t want to say, but he still answers, “My friend Oz. He’s going to help us.”

Alarm rings between his ears; C looks up sharply and blurts, “The Beacon Commissioner?”

Qrow startles, then nods. “Yeah, him. Before you freak out, I promise you can trust him.”

C chews the inside of his lip and wraps his arms around himself. With a scattered feeling of wildness, he contemplates getting out of the car, but that idea terrifies him too. Anyone could see him on the street. No one else would help him. No one else would hide him. No one else would give him a jacket. He whispers, “Are you sure?”

Qrow pauses again. Then, “I’m sure.”

C doesn’t say anything to that. In his peripherals, dark apartment buildings blur by and start melding into shops. Traffic grows thicker. The car slows.

A beat of awkward silence. Qrow says, “Did you see the card I gave you?”

C looks up again, brows knitting. “The one with the green cogs,” he supplies.

“Yeah. That’s Oz’s card.” Qrow exhales, rakes a hand through his bangs. His hair is still unbrushed and wild from sleep. As they pass into shopping streets, neon signs outline his silhouette and casts blocks of color over high cheekbones. “This is going to sound hard to believe,” he admits. “Ozpin is…he’s the leader of a resistance group that’s rescuing Replicants from retirement.”

C’s mouth falls open in disbelief.. He blinks, starts to ask something, then blinks again. “A what?” he manages.

“I know it sounds crazy,” Qrow says, then swears under his breath as city traffic slows to a near stop. He leans back in the driver’s seat, shoulders slumping. “You know my music, don’t you? That’s how you knew me, not from my police records.”

Speechless, and now a little caught and embarrassed besides, C shuts his mouth and nods, hunching his shoulders.

“The concerts are partly a front,” Qrow explains. “After Replicants used my music during the riots, we got the idea to keep putting out songs they’d relate to. We hoped that Replicants living in hiding would come to the shows, and then people we’d already rescued could try to pick them out from the crowd and take them someplace safe.”

“And that…works?” C asks hesitantly.

Qrow grins. That odd flutter leaps in C again. “Hey, it worked on you, didn’t it?” 

C feels his cheeks turn pink. He’s never been particularly antsy, but for some reason, being in this little space with Qrow Branwen makes him feel…skittish. Or, everything happening right now makes him feel skittish, but this lacks that little tang of fear. This is…warmer. “What does Commissioner Ozpin have to do with that?” he asks.

Qrow’s face darkens, and he turns his gaze forward again. “It’s...a long story,” he says. “And there’s more, but it’s a lot to take in. I’ll explain the rest later.” He pauses, then adds, “Jimmy’s in on it. James, I mean.”

At his mention, C inhales so sharply that it’s nearly a gasp. Blood on white gloves flits through his memory. “He…” he rasps, then lets out his breath hard, and then neon pink catches his eye. He glances out the window and squints at the bright ad that looks down at the traffic, pink and blue and bleeding purple, and he realizes it’s the same Harbingers ad that he saw hours ago.

It looks at him. It blinks. It smiles.

Qrow scoffs quietly beside him. “I hate those things,” he mutters. “We let them do it to stay on a few corporate good sides, so our music doesn’t get banned from streaming platforms right off the jump. I think they make me look like a tool.”

The AI with Qrow’s eyes shimmers oddly in the near morning light. It’s gaze follows the car as traffic picks up again. It’s still looking as they pull out into an intersection.

C realizes he’s made a horrible mistake.

“Qrow,” he says urgently, and then Qrow swears and jerks the wheel to avoid the human shape that suddenly drops into the road. The car skids into oncoming traffic, headlights flash through the windshields, and for a moment, everything goes dark.

The world blurs back from black slowly. C blinks, eyes unfocused, dazed. He smells smoke, and the sharp, acrid scent of ruined metal and scalded rubber. His body aches. C lifts his head and feels a twinge in his neck, feels vague urgency pulsing in the back of his mind. He needs to—

“Qrow?” he croaks. There’s white mess all over the car…the airbag burst. C blinks again and pushes it down clumsily, eyes roaming aimlessly over his crunched surroundings, and finally processes the image of Qrow slumped in his seat, hands splayed on either side of his lap and blood dripping from his nose, nearly ink black in neon city light.

Panic races through him as he quickly presses his fingers beneath Qrow’s jaw to feel for his pulse, borders on hysteria when he feels nothing. No, no…he’s shaking, _calm down._ Breathe—a beat, and another, steady. Qrow groans softly at the touch, features pinching. _Alive._

C doesn’t have time to be relieved before he spots a familiar silhouette just outside Qrow’s broken window.

 _Fuck._ He scrambles to unbuckle his seatbelt, tries the door and finds it stuck. _Fuck._ He shoves his weight against it, feels it give just a little, then twists in his seat until he can brace his feet against the door and kicks hard. The door goes flying off the hinges, just as EL5-3.0 rips the door off on Qrow’s side. 

C leaps out of the car and whirls to face her, pulling the hood off his head. E looks up, brows raised, ruined car door in one hand and her war hammer in the other.

“Don’t hurt him,” C pleads, hands out placatingly.

E’s face darkens. “It’s not my job to deal with him,” she says plainly, as if it should be obvious. She drops the car door, and it thuds heavily against the asphalt as she steps around the car. There are a few others pushed aside along the road, headlights shattered and windows full of hairline cracks, and traffic piles up on either side of the wreck. “Are you going to come quietly?”

“E, listen to me,” C tries, taking a step back. “I don’t want to fight you.”

“Then don’t. It’ll be easier on both of us if you just let me take you in.”

He knows that. He _knows_ that. But—but James _told_ him to go. He’d run on _orders._ And… 

He doesn’t _want_ to. 

“C,” E says. She sounds tired. Manta sirens go off in the distance; he wonders how long she’s been awake, looking for him. “Don’t make this difficult.”

C takes Kingfisher from his belt, extends the rod and keeps the line taut. “You don’t have to do this,” he says, and his voice tremors, and he’s not even sure if he believes it.

E scowls, then turns her face away from him, closes her eyes and exhales. She’s heard this a hundred times. “Yes,” she murmurs, “I do.”

She charges. C feels his muscles lock up briefly before he bolts, and her hammer comes down where he was standing a split second later. E is slower than he is, the size and nature of her weapon hindering her agility in exchange for raw power, which means that if he can evade her long enough, he’ll be fine. And if he can’t—

He just has to get her away from Qrow. Likely, his aura had taken the brunt of the damage from the accident, so if he woke quickly, he could still escape the cops. C just has to lead the commotion far enough away that no one pays him mind. Before any other Blade Runners show up.

C turns and bolts into the traffic, boots hammering on metal as he runs on top of the cars. The passengers inside shout and flinch as they catch sight of him running towards their windshields; E can’t hurt them. If he can get her to follow him, she at least can’t bring the hammer down.

“C!” E shouts, frustration plain in her voice as she barrels after him, footsteps heavy. C glances back just in time to avoid a swing at his head and slides down to the trunk of a car before leaping to the next. 

“Be still!” she snaps, grunting with the effort of her next blow. C grabs Kingfisher’s rod in both hands to block it and braces himself as her hammer crashes into it, but it still sends him skidding sideways and tumbling down to the asphalt. Above him, E hefts her hammer over her head and leaps into the air; C’s eyes widen, and he quickly dives out of the way and rolls to his feet just as E leaves a crack in the concrete.

“You can’t run forever!” E calls after him.

“Neither can you!” C shouts over his shoulder, and takes off between rows of cars. 

He’s going to have to get creative here. E can lift his body weight easily, so tethering her with Kingfisher only spells trouble, and he can’t afford to get into close combat with her, either, not without somehow disarming her first. Otherwise, his only shot is to lose her, and that—a quick glance behind him, and E still in hot pursuit—doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen.

C resigns himself to the fact that he’s most likely going to be caught and pushes his legs faster.

The road splits off into other cross-sections where traffic is still moving, slow and congested at the mouth and piling higher. Cold, crisp morning air sings the heat away from his body and chills the sweat he’s built up; the sun still hasn’t come up, and headlights burn his eyes and blacken the surrounding shadows. Lights flick on as people enter their workplaces or are otherwise woken by the commotion, advertisements cast half-transparent columns of moving color across the streets. In the far distance, C spots blinking flashes of red and blue. His heart sinks, his breath gone with it. He is going to be caught. He’d made a valiant effort. Ultimately for naught, but valiant all the same. He’d followed James’s order to the best of his ability. _Cells. When you’re not performing your duty, do they keep you in a little box—?_

There’s a sound far enough behind him that he almost misses it, something he can only really describe as _ejection,_ and then pain erupts between his shoulder blades. C cries out and crashes to the ground, Kingfisher clattering out of his hand. The immediate surrounding cars screech to a stop to avoid hitting him, and the sponge grenade that struck him in the back rolls between their tires.

He hadn’t thought she’d use Timber’s launcher form this close to civilians, but he supposes an ex-Blade Runner escaping from police custody would make the station look bad. 

C groans as he tries to pull himself up, feeling a heavy bruise forming and the sting of scraped skin on his cheek and limbs. His aura shimmers, not broken but dangerously low.

“This could’ve been easy,” E says, her white uniform lit brightly by the headlights of the nearest car. She sounds out of breath. “I never figured you of all people would need retiring, or if you did, you wouldn’t make a fuss about it.”

“E,” C gasps, half-dragging himself away from her until his back hits the car in the next lane over, and then there’s nowhere else to go.

“Coming with me would’ve been easier. For both of us.” Her brows knit. She exhales. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“Then don’t—”

“Why are you talking like we have a choice suddenly?” she snaps. “Even if I didn’t, V would, or H, or M. Getting away was never an option for you. I don’t understand how you’re even doing this.”

“That makes two of us,” C croaks. Hot tears blur his vision. “Please don’t do this.”

She scowls, then shakes her head. “For what it’s worth,” she says, lifting her arm and aiming her gauntlet at him, “I’m sorry.”

C lets out a few short breaths. A tear spills over, and he squeezes his eyes shut, waiting. Wishing.

And then, a loud screech of tires to his left, a crash of metal; C opens his eyes and watches that car suddenly skid past him, rear ended by a stack of others that didn’t stop in time. The tires slide just an inch shy of his boots. E cries out as it hits her, sends her colliding into the next car, and pins her there.

C stares with wide eyes, adrenaline racing through his veins and shock keeping him frozen there. E shouts in pain, aura shimmering before it breaks and fizzles out in sparks of warm brown. Nothing broken, then, but she’s stuck fast, and grunts with the effort of pushing the cars back. 

“Clover!” 

C jolts and sees Qrow running towards him, blood still caked under his nose. There’s a longboard tucked under his arm, gravity propulsions pulsing soft purple. “Are you alright?” he demands, dropping to his knees beside him. That has to be it then…a stroke of bad luck for E, just as Qrow arrived. C glances up at her again, and she fixes him with an absolutely furious gaze he can’t even blame her for. This will cost her a bonus, and possibly future missions, and she can’t possibly understand everything that’s thrumming in his chest now. 

“I…” C starts, gaze flitting back to Qrow. He is still strangely beautiful even in all this harsh light, even with all the blood, with his cherry red eyes and full lashes, his dark hair and the soft lines of his mouth. It sends a strange pang of regret through C’s chest, to know that he can’t spend longer looking at him.

“That was unlucky,” he says breathlessly, nodding in E’s direction and wincing as Qrow grabs his arm and hauls him to his feet, then hands him Kingfisher. 

Qrow opens his mouth, then looks back at E, brows knitting in confusion as he meets C’s eyes again. “That wasn’t me,” he says. 

Now C’s mouth falls open, hands stilling where he’d been attaching his weapon to his belt. It had to be…what were the odds that he got out of that unscathed? That it was just enough to ruin E’s hunt? How could—

“We don’t have time to worry about it,” Qrow interrupts, tossing the longboard to the ground. The gravity propulsions hum and whir to life before it hits, and he quickly steps onto it. “Let’s go.”

When C doesn’t immediately join him, Qrow looks up in confusion. 

“We can’t both fit on that,” C says softly. “Where did you even get it?”

“I bought it off some kid on the sidewalk. Who cares?” Qrow looks past all the traffic, off at those blinking siren lights. He scowls. “We need to go before the Mantas catch up to us.”

“Qrow,” C tries again. Being arrested for disturbing the peace is one thing, but aiding a fugitive? If Qrow is caught for that… “We can’t both fit.”

“Yes, we can.”

“Even if we could, our weight—”

“I’m not leaving you!” Qrow snaps, harsh, even as he offers his hand. “Now cut the shit and get on before they get here!” 

C stares at him, startled silent. He still can’t understand this. For Qrow to take such risks for him, to insist on it…what was the point? What did he gain from it? Escape for Qrow would be easier solo. If he had turned C away, he wouldn’t be in danger in the first place. He wouldn’t have a wrecked car, wouldn’t have a bloody nose.

“Clover,” Qrow tries, gently now. “Trust me. Please.”

C glances at E one more time. She’s staring at him, disbelieving. He wonders if this will trigger something in her.

He takes Qrow’s hand and steps onto the board, their legs slotted together loosely for a precarious balance.

“Hang on to me,” Qrow tells him, and C’s heart flutters, and he wraps his arms around Qrow’s middle tightly.

“Hey!” E yells. “C, don’t you dare!”

The hoverboard propulsions reverberate heavily under their combined weight. C feels the guilt well up sharply— _and dreadfully distinct against the dark, I am not supposed to—_ and he buries his face in Qrow’s shoulder to drown it all out.

“Get back here!” E shouts, and the wind cards through C’s hair as Qrow presses his heel into the accelerator and takes off past her.

* * *

Qrow squeezes his wrist and C jolts awake, then tightens his hold around Qrow’s waist again. 

They’ve been riding so long that he feels like his legs could give out, between the tension in his calves as he tries to keep balance and the motor vibrations beneath his feet. The sun is up and just creeping past the horizon, casting a dozy warmth over his back while cold winter wind bites into his hands and face.

“We’re almost there,” Qrow says over the noise. “You holding up?”

“I’ll live,” C replies, and it startles him, how true that is. He’ll live. He’ll _live._ “Where are we?”

“Edge of Mistral District,” Qrow answers. 

C’s brows knit. He lifts his head a bit to look around, finds them passing the outskirts of what appears to be slums. Early morning stragglers look up at the board’s hum, shapes blurred by their speed.

Qrow, as he recalls, still has a warrant in Mistral. “Are we hiding here?” C asks. “It’s going to be hard to lay low when we’re both…criminals.”

Qrow glances back at him, eyes narrowed. “You’re not a criminal,” he says. “There’s no law that says Replicants have to take a baseline, and there’s no law that says you have to be retired for failing one either.”

C blinks at him. That’s…true. 

“And no,” Qrow goes on, turning back to face their path. “We’re going to the Menagerie District.” 

“The old mining district?” C blurts. “But it’s—”

“Abandoned? Dangerous? Yeah. That’s what we like people to think.”

C blinks again, confused. ‘Menagerie’ wasn’t even the district’s proper name; in fact, it was hardly a district at all. Originally, it’d been nicknamed that for the number of Faunus that had lived there, and the name stuck even as human/Faunus relations had begun to improve. But that was over two hundred years ago, before the place had been bought out by a company (Schnider? Schnepp? Schnee?) looking to dig through the earth for Dust, and hard labor started being supplied by early Replicants instead. 

It’d been cleared out after the company had run the Dust reserves into the ground. By then, the terrain had been so ruined by machinery and man-made caves that no food could be grown, and no one wanted to live there anymore, or anywhere near it, for that matter.

“That’s where you hide Replicants?” C asks, stunned. 

“That’s where nobody comes looking,” Qrow says.

They ride on for a little more, till the last of the Mistral houses fade in the distance and the terrain turns to wet dirt and rock under layers of snow. The air feels heavy but crisp, the wind laden with thin, wispy snowflakes that coat the world in undisturbed white. C feels Qrow shiver in his arms and squeezes him a little tighter, then blinks and wonders at himself.

Qrow glances back at him in surprise. “You alright?”

“You’re cold,” C tells him, which he’s sure Qrow knows, then flushes. “Maybe I should—”

As if on cue, the hoverboard sputters and wobbles. Qrow mutters, “Ah, shit,” just as the board sinks lower and then comes to rest on the ground, apparently out of gravity Dust. Reluctantly, C withdraws his arms and steps away. The cold bites through his hoodie, and he immediately misses Qrow’s warmth. 

“Well,” Qrow sighs, scratching the back of his neck. “It lasted longer than I thought it would. We’re not too far, at least. Come on.”

He sets off walking without further comment, like he just expects C to follow him. Which…isn’t wrong, but C still thinks about it too hard. In the short time they’ve known each other, Qrow has never once wavered in his convictions. He’s never budged on the matter of C’s humanity or lack thereof, never backed out of helping or showing even the simplest of kindnesses. C still isn’t sure what to think, or how to interpret what he feels about it. He’s still coming to grips with the fact that he feels anything about it at all. 

So he follows, partly because he is, in many ways, lost, and partly because he wants to. That’s new.

They walk for ten minutes in relative silence, cold, hungry, and tired. C’s brain is still flitting between topics he’d ordinarily shut out: the nerves in his belly, James’s glove, Qrow’s pullover, his cologne; what he’ll do after this, where he’ll go, how people will treat him.

“Qrow?” C asks quietly. 

Qrow glances over at him, eyes curious. “Hm?”

“Do they—” C starts, then swallows. He pulls the hoodie sleeves further over his hands. It doesn’t help with the cold, not noticeably, but he doesn’t really need it to. “Do your friends know I’m a Blade Runner?”

A long pause, then: “Yeah.”

Budding panic springs up, just briefly. C’s breath catches. “Won’t they…” he trails off. 

“Won’t they what?”

“They won’t be happy to see me,” C finishes. Not that he blames them. He wouldn’t want to see another N9 right now either, especially considering how his last interaction with one went. Maybe this hideout, this refuge…maybe he wouldn’t even be welcome there. Maybe he should’ve just gone back with E, and saved them all the trouble. 

Qrow exhales and stops. It’s almost serene like this, just the two of them in this sea of white, their footsteps trailing neatly behind them, snow dusting their hair, breath fogging just past their mouths. “Clover,” he starts.

“Why do you keep calling me that?” C asks, softer than the first time he’d asked. He’d never gotten his answer, back in that apartment that turned his entire existence on its heel. 

“Because ‘C’ isn’t a name,” Qrow answers firmly. “It’s just shorthand for a code that keeps you tied to a system.”

C opens his mouth and doesn’t know how to respond. It’s not a name. He’s never thought of it as a name. But it’s not quite what he’s asking, not really the sort of answer that’s going to untangle all these thoughts and desires he’s been having.

“If you don’t like ‘Clover’,” Qrow adds, and puts a hand on C’s shoulder, “then we can figure out something else for you. But I won’t call you nothing.”

The declaration sends such a sudden swell of emotion through him that his throat closes up. He blinks. Qrow’s form blurs at the edges. 

Qrow softens. “And it wasn’t your fault,” he says. “You didn’t get to choose your life. They know that. We’ve all done things that we regret, so don’t…don’t keep beating yourself up over it, alright? You didn’t know.”

C presses his lips together and nods. His stomach feels like it’s twisted up in knots, his chest tight. 

“We’re almost there,” Qrow promises, and nudges Clover into a walk, hand sliding over his back like an anchor.

They walk for a while longer, until they come up on enormous abandoned drills, carts of tools and picked-apart stone, rusted over and creaking. It’s quiet here otherwise, no obvious signs of life and next to no growth apart from thick clusters of dying weeds. Qrow leads him over to the mouth of one of the mine shafts, a shadow of it’s grandiose days of wealth and metal, and takes out his Scroll and turns on the flashlight.

“Be careful,” Qrow warns. “It’s a little slick here.”

C nods and follows after him, studying their surroundings as they go. The air is heavier here, warmer, which is odd, considering it’s a cave in the middle of winter. Still, the years of being untouched by the rich have molded the caves into something jagged but oddly pretty, the ceilings crowned in barely formed stalactites and small pools of water gathering on the floor.

Having spent the entirety of his short life in the city, and only ever leaving it in pursuit of the target, C can’t help feeling a little stunned at the sight. Water glimmers in tiny droplets along the stone, wild mushrooms and liverworts lining the edge of the floor. C realizes only absently that his mouth is hanging open a bit, his eyes pinned to the beauty of the cave walls. If he were paying more attention, he might notice Qrow watching him out of the corner of his eye, a small, crooked smile at the corner of his lips.

And then C’s boot catches a small crack in the floor, and he’s pitching forward.

Instead of the floor, C collides with a broad chest. In a rather impressive burst of speed, Qrow had side-stepped and caught him, and now peers down at C with a raised brow and amusement in his eyes. “I told you to be careful,” he says, unmistakably teasing.

C abruptly realizes that his hands are tight in the back of Qrow’s coat, and he's still very much being held upright in the man’s arms. Heat creeps up the back of his neck and floods his cheeks, warms him all the way down his chest and settles in his belly, and C quickly lurches back, embarrassed. “Sorry,” he manages, clearing his throat.

“Don’t be,” Qrow reassures him gently, then stoops to pick up his fallen Scroll. “Once you’ve been in these caves as many times as I have, you’ll be able to walk them blindfolded. But in the meantime…” He offers his hand and waits patiently, smile kind and non-judgemental.

C hesitates, stares at Qrow’s open palm like it’s something foreign and unknown. He’s seen others do this a hundred times, families and friends and lovers, but no one has ever held his hand before, aside from a teammate helping him to his feet here and there, or a nurse while bandaging his arm. Never without need, never out of genuine care, and never mind twice in a day. He swallows.

“I don’t bite, you know,” Qrow says, laughter in his voice.

C meets his eyes. There’s no sense of malice there, no ill intent. There never has been. C likes to think he’s gotten pretty good at recognizing those signs in humans. After a moment, he takes Qrow’s hand.

Qrow smiles and squeezes his fingers ever so slightly, and C burns for it.

The cave only grows more beautiful the deeper they go, ferns and thick moss coating everything in healthy green and clear water streaming in thin waterfalls from a river above ground. Lights strung up along the walls begin to light the way, faint sounds of talking and laughter grow louder as they near. C squints, and then realizes with awe that there are shelters and campsites set up all over the cavern. 

“Welcome to Menagerie,” Qrow says, watching C’s expression with obvious pride. 

Before C can wrangle his thoughts into something coherent and sensible, a man approaches them, crooked glasses set low on his nose and a cane in his hand. He’s dressed well, though his white hair is enough of a mess to ruin some of his professionalism, and his brown eyes are the most welcoming he’s seen since—

“Qrow, for gods’ sakes,” the man sighs, then pulls a handkerchief from his pocket and offers it to him. “You had me worried sick.”

“Airbag just popped me in the face, is all,” Qrow says dismissively, taking it and wincing as he rubs some of the dried blood from beneath his nose. “I’m alright.”

“I don’t know that I qualify anything involving an airbag deployment as ‘alright’,” the man says, then sighs again and draws Qrow into his arms. “It’s good to see you, my friend.”

Qrow lets go of C’s hand and the loss is somehow crushing, if only briefly. C looks away to bear it, overwhelmed and taken aback. He has never needed these things before. He's never had the sense to _want_ them. It seems like every time Qrow gives him a little taste of something new, it leaves him staggered and breathless, unsure of himself in a way he'd never thought himself capable of being.

“It’s good to see you too,” Qrow says, then withdraws and turns to Clover again, beaming. “This is Clover. Uh…name pending.” 

C feels caught then, not sure how to respond to being introduced that way. The man looks him over quickly, then gives him a smile so kind that C is struck with the notion that he’s wise beyond his years.

“Hello, Clover,” he says, reaching out to take C’s hand to shake. “My name is Ozpin. Welcome to your new home. James has told me a quite a lot about you.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Music for this chapter: [Rapture](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZ2pse3fR4k) and [Rebirth](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY0xMX5tGxw) by Ok Goodnight.
> 
> Note: Tags have been updated.

_ [Transcript: Daily news segment with Remnant News Network’s Lisa Lavender. Nov. 22nd, 2049] _

**Lisa Lavender:** This morning at approximately 4:40 AM, a series of car wrecks occurred near 5th and Main St. here in the Atlas District. Victims reported seeing an Atlas Blade Runner pursuing a man on foot through traffic, though a second set of collisions apparently allowed what is assumed to be a Replicant offender to escape. 

**LL:** Currently, police have closed off the area for investigation. While it is unclear as to what caused the accidents, there have been several eye-witness accounts claiming that Remnant’s popular rebel star, Qrow Branwen, was spotted at the scene. Investigators have so far refused to comment.

**LL:** We have submitted an inquiry to the Atlas Police Precinct and are still awaiting a statement from Atlas Commissioner James Ironwood. We here at Remnant News will report our findings to the public as soon as we’re able. Back to you, Ivy.

**Ivy Altham:** Thank you, Lisa. Today’s broadcast is brought to you by… 

_ [End Transcript] _

* * *

Ozpin’s tent is much bigger than the others, mostly to house filing cabinets and tables stacked high with paperwork, laptops, and various city maps. There are little pockmarks in the ground around the table legs, implying they’ve been bumped or moved many times, and some of the filing cabinets are covered in a thin layer of dust that hints at disuse. Between that and the sheer size of the camp, it’s quite clear that this operation isn’t new.

“How long have you been doing this?” C asks, awed.

Ozpin hums, taking a seat at the table in the back of the tent, a cup of still steaming hot chocolate at his elbow. “Twenty or so odd years, perhaps?” he answers as Qrow takes two fold-up chairs from a small stack in the corner and sets them down across from him. “Please, take a seat. I’m sure you have a lot of questions.”

He has so many questions that he hardly knows where to start. Either his silence gives him away or the look on his face does, so Ozpin adds gently, “First, I give you my word that you’re safe here. We have sensors surrounding the area to alert us of any approaching vehicles, and escape routes ready should it be necessary. Though, I should specify that it’s never been.”

“I don’t understand,” C manages.

“What is unclear?”

“All of this!” C exclaims, then flushes and lowers his voice, setting a little further into his chair. “I don’t get any of this. Why are you…” He trails off, eyes falling to his lap, where his hands curl into fists. He’s gotten Qrow’s hoodie dirty, he realizes, frowns. Then, quietly: “Why risk this much to help Replicants?”

Next to him, Qrow sighs. Ozpin’s expression softens—C can’t quite get a read on him; he’s plainly good-hearted, even as he is quite possibly the most guarded man C has ever met—and he asks, “Why shouldn’t we?”

“Because—” C starts, then cuts himself off and looks at Qrow, knowing he won't like C’s answer. Qrow is already looking back at him, brows knitted and eyes sad in that way that makes shame prickle along the nape of C’s neck. Still, because it’s the only truth he knows, he drops his gaze and finishes quietly, “Because we’re not real people, and we…” He trails off.

It’s silent for a moment. Ozpin laces his fingers together and sets his arms on the table, glancing at Qrow and exhaling slowly. Finally, he says, “What reason would I have to lie? After all…I’m a Replicant.”

C looks up sharply. For a moment, he says nothing, then huffs a laugh, humorless. “Is this a joke?” he asks. 

“Not at all,” Ozpin answers. “I’m quite serious.”

This… hurts. He must have misjudged. He’s confused enough already and now they were just...what, poking fun? Just lying? Had he ruined his life on a pretense of sincerity? C tries to school his features into something less visibly upset and fails. Isn’t that how he got here? “You’ve used your semblance in the public eye plenty of times,” C insists. “Even I’ve seen it on the news before.”

“Well, yes,” Ozpin agrees. “But nonetheless, I am a Replicant. All human beings are capable of developing semblances.”

Enough.  _ Enough. _ C has never been so angry as he has the last few days, and it swells up in him suddenly like a match to gasoline. “Why are you pretending like you could possibly understand what I’ve been through?” C snaps, standing up. “Humans have  _ everything, _ and I…” His throat closes up. The fire chokes out. “I can’t even go home,” he rasps. 

To his credit, Ozpin doesn’t seem fazed by his outburst. Instead, he only nods understandingly. “I admit I haven’t faced the same prejudices,” he says calmly, “because I have been masquerading as someone I’m not for a very, very long time. But I can prove that I’m a Replicant, if you’ll allow me.”

C just stares at him, apprehensive. After a moment, he takes a deep breath and sits back down. Ozpin smiles, then reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out an eye scanner. 

The surprise must show on C’s face, because Ozpin chuckles. “Let’s just say you aren’t the first to doubt my story,” he says.

Unsure of how to respond to that, C looks to Qrow again. Qrow only smiles, encouraging, cocks his head at Ozpin as if to redirect C’s attention there. C lets his gaze linger a moment more, on cheery red and graying black and neat stubble, before he turns back to Ozpin curiously. 

Ozpin straightens. “Now,” he says, flicking the scanner light on, “it’s been a moment since I’ve been out in the field, but if I recall correctly, the saying is ‘look up and to the left’?” 

C blinks. Ozpin pulls his eyelid down with his thumb, looks up and—

C gasps and jumps out of his seat again, this time out of shock. His chair clatters to the ground.  _ OZ9-1.7  _ glares from beneath Ozpin’s iris, plain as day beneath the scanner’s light.

“What the hell is going on here?” C breathes. 

“Well,” Ozpin says, as if he hadn’t just completely unraveled everything C has ever known, “I’m afraid that’s a long story. Please sit?”

C opens his mouth and shuts it, tries to say something and shuts it again. His legs feel locked in place. His chest feels tight and the air suddenly feels too warm. Ozpin has a serial number. Ozpin has a serial number and a semblance. Ozpin has a serial number and a semblance and he’s a Police Commissioner. Ozpin has a—

“Clover,” Qrow says gently, reaching out for C’s wrist. C jolts at the contact, and Qrow quickly withdraws.

“What the hell is going on?” C repeats. He sounds awful. He sounds near hysterics.  _ Worst baseline failure on record,  _ that’s him. His heart is going a mile a minute and his gaze flits between these two impossible men with enough speed to send the precinct’s machine skittering. 

“What’s going on,” Ozpin answers, “is that I have been posing as a natural born human for quite some time.” He folds one arm behind his back neatly and takes a sip of his hot chocolate with the other. “I’m sure you’ve seen some news over the past few years regarding the…not so friendly relations between our two precints and the Grimm Corporation. How old are you, now?”

“Seven,” C manages.

“Right, well.” Ozpin sighs. “You wouldn’t have been born yet then, and I assume you’re not one to read the tabloids. Rumor would have it that my precinct refuses to work with Grimm Co. because their CEO is…my ex-wife. And Atlas precinct ceased collaboration with the company soon after James was instated as Commissioner. Some have argued that the decision was made out of loyalty to me, which is actually quite true.” 

C has never thought about why the districts choose one company to work with over another. He’d assumed it had something to do with cost-effectiveness. In any case, finding out more about where Replicants went to be taken apart had never been high on his priority list. 

“Salem, while abhorrently unethical, actually has a darker past than most will ever know,” Ozpin goes on. “You see, many years prior to the release of the Nexus-9 line of Replicants, Salem lost her young husband, Ozma.”

“But that’s you,” C says slowly. “Ozma Pine.”

Ozpin lowers his chin, as if discomforted. “Actually,” he says, “Ozma Pine is dead.”

Qrow stands up and quietly rights C’s chair. “You’re shaking,” he says gently. 

He is shaking. Worse, Qrow noticeably keeps his hands close to his own body. C briefly worries that his startled reaction a moment ago had implied that he doesn’t wish to be touched, which isn’t true, and also doesn’t matter. He exhales, takes a seat again, and does his best to ignore Qrow’s eyes on him.

Ozpin takes a seat again too, and takes another sip of hot chocolate. “To explain,” he says, “Salem lost Ozma to illness a very long time ago. Back then, they’d lived an incredibly private life; Ozma was a fantasy novelist who wrote under a pseudonym, and since Salem had not yet inherited her father’s failing company, most barely knew what she looked like, nevermind her husband. So, after his death, Salem took up Replicant creation so she might simply…remake him.”

C’s mouth falls open again. It’s no secret that Replicants and AIs are often designed to suit a customer’s aesthetic tastes, but he had always assigned that concept to something like…companions and pleasure models, not to grief.

“However, Replicant production for the purpose of identity theft is obviously illegal,” Ozpin says. “And furthermore, the process was a bit outdated. The first replica of Ozma Pine was…close, but not quite perfect. He favored the original, but…as I said, outdated processes. And Salem was hardly an expert when she began. That, combined with the limited resources and little help due to secrecy, meant that many of the early replicas passed quickly. I am the final replica, and the only one that did not die to organ failure.” He straightens his glasses, a sad smile drifting over his face. “I like to imagine that I’m a bit more handsome than the original, but I’ve been told that’s not true.”

“Original Oz was pretty hot,” Qrow agrees.

When C doesn’t laugh, both men shift uncomfortably in their chairs. C realizes he’s missed a joke again. 

“In any case,” Ozpin says, “It was some time before I realized what I was. As you’re aware, without an eye scanner, my serial number was not visible to me, and I had little reason to suspect it was there. And to make matters even more confusing, Salem spent a long, long time copying Ozma’s memories into each replica, and through trial and error…well. By the time she got to me, she’d perfected the process. So, from the moment of my birth, I believed that I had fallen ill and had been roused from a comatose state. I believed that I had once been a child, I had grown up…that I loved her.”

_ Loved. _ C had spent so long thinking that loving or being loved was something he was incapable of, but Ozpin had known it since birth. A flurry of emotion rushes through him unbidden: bitter jealousy and a terrible longing, a horrible sense of feeling left behind. He tightens his fists in his lap, sweat gathering at his palms.

“During our time together,” Ozpin says, a faint hint of mourning in his voice, “I suppose Salem must have realized that she could start turning a profit if she could convince the right government officials that she could make the perfect Replicants, ones that couldn’t disobey or turn against humans.”

“Nexus-9s,” C murmurs.

“Correct. But that,” Ozpin points out, “like almost everything out of her mouth, was a lie. What Salem did was give Replicants two things: a memory of physical abuse from her own childhood, and a heightened level of cortisol.”

C’s brows knit. “But I don’t—”

“Recall the memory, yes. The cortisol is what prevents the recollection of that implanted memory. Essentially, you’ve been made to repress it. This influences the intensity of your fear of retribution, hence the obedience that N9’s tend to display towards authority figures. But, as you’ve recently discovered, you are actually just as capable of disobedience as any other living thing.”

C exhales sharply.  _ Is that what they tell you? You’re afraid, they use that fear to— _

“It was some time after production began,” Ozpin says, interrupting his train of thought, “that I discovered the lab where Salem had created me, and all the evidence that she had used me to replace her late husband. I imagine all the failures with Ozma copies numbed her to the consequences of what she was doing. I ran from her after that. Went into hiding. Salem searched for me, but since I don’t look like the original Ozma, she couldn’t put out search warrants without her family realizing something was wrong.” He frowns here, eyes vacant for a moment before he blinks and shakes his head. “I’m not quite sure how she planned to hide me from them in the long run, but I suppose it worked out in my favor. They’d rather die than compromise their reputations, so my secret is, for the time being, safe.”

The story almost seems to ring in his ears. C had hardly ever given thought to why the world was the way it was, but there were people out there who knew and said nothing, who let this go on for years, who let people treat Replicant’s like—

“After that, I began infiltrating Vale precinct with the goal of getting promoted to commissioner so I could smuggle Replicants out from under Salem. She’d already had all of Ozma’s identification altered to match me, so it was easy enough to slip back into the role. And since I had proof of what she had done, and was a living example of a disobedient Nexus-9, there was little she could do but leave me be. Eventually, we got James a position in the Atlas precinct for the same reasons. And…here we are.” A pause, then: “There’s a bit more in relation to Harbingers, but…I’m sure Qrow would prefer to explain that himself, if he wishes.”

Qrow glances at him and nods, but doesn’t continue the story. Instead, he leans forward and braces his arms on his knees. “Clover?” he asks. “You alright?”

He is not alright. He hasn’t been alright for days. He hasn’t been alright since he opened his eyes to a backdrop of stormy winter clouds and Qrow’s silhouette framed by streetlight. He blinks twice, and then once again as his vision blurs. His breath comes out shaky and loud. “So those…all those Replicants I retired,” he stammers. “They…they’re not—”

“They were all shipped off to Polendina Labs,” Ozpin answers gently, “and then smuggled here to us, alive. You were never responsible for any deaths.”

C meets his eyes, frantically searching for any sign of deception. Ozpin’s eyes are honest. 

“In fact,” Ozpin says, standing again, “if you’ll follow me…”

C looks helplessly to Qrow, and for what, he doesn’t know. Guidance, maybe. Some clue of what to do in a broader span of what’s currently being asked of him. Qrow just smiles, still kind, still encouraging, still mournful, and rises to follow after Ozpin. And C trails after him, still skittish, but like a moth to flame nonetheless.

Ozpin exits the tent with the two of them in tow and scans the little community built in the enormous caverns; beyond tents that Replicants sleep in, there’s a tent marked as a small clinic, a place where food is prepared, various fire pits built for refugees to sit around and eat together. There’s a place set up for showering, with divides and curtains braced near the cave walls, where thin pipes disappear into the rock and into what must be the same river that sprouts little waterfalls throughout the caverns. There’s a space cleared for exercise too, with small home gym equipment strewn about, occupied by restless Replicants still working off the anxiety of being shipped in a box.

It’s here that Ozpin points to a pair sparring, a blond young man and a young woman with bright red hair. “There, with Jaune,” Ozpin says, and C absently recalls seeing that boy in the picture in Qrow’s apartment. “James sent Pyrhha Nikos to us just two weeks ago. I believe she was one of your assignments.”

“This is impossible,” C breathes. “I thought…”

Qrow’s Scroll chimes out a tune, and his brows pinch as he checks it. “Oz,” he says, motioning at C as he steps away, and into his Scroll, “Hey. Yeah, I found him…” and C barely registers that he spoke. 

Ozpin puts a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sure this is a lot to take in,” he says kindly. “We’ve been expecting you, so you have a tent set up already, and we have spare clothes as well.”

“I thought I killed her,” C rasps. “I thought I killed all of them, I…” 

“Oh!” Ozpin exclaims, quickly hooking an arm around C’s middle as his knees give out. He’s more solid than Qrow somehow, and that lends to his enhanced strength and  _ gods, _ he’s a Replicant. Ozpin is an honest to gods Replicant, and he has a semblance, and Pyrhha had a semblance, and that girl with the war hammer had a semblance. Replicants have semblances and he can disobey and he has never killed anyone and—

Ozpin lowers him to sit on the ground while he tries to get air into his lungs. The world sways. He is hungry and tired and nothing makes sense. His pulse thunders in his ears and every sound of nearby chatter runs into a blur of static. Everything—

“—ver? Clover.” 

Qrow’s hand on his shoulder. C barely registers that Qrow is attempting to give him his Scroll. “It’s James,” Qrow says softly.

James. Blood on white gloves, haircuts, no cigarettes. James. C takes the Scroll in shaking hands and holds it up to his ear, swallowing.

_ “C?” _ comes James’s voice, frantic. 

The camp Meifeng had asked about. The new recruit from two weeks before. A barbershop that took Replicants without prejudice, a too-muscular barber with a wind semblance.  _ Say something.  _ “Sir,” C whispers.

_ “Oh, thank the Brothers,”  _ James says in relief.  _ “I’m so glad you’re safe. I thought…I’m so sorry, C. I know you must be terrified.” _

Say something.  _ Say something.  _

_ “E came back and reported the crash and I…I was afraid you got hurt.” _ James’s voice wavers, just slightly. The Commissioner doesn’t usually visit the clinic.  _ “I’m so sorry for putting you through that.”  _

_ What was I supposed to think when I got a report of a Rhino being towed and no driver in sight?  _ Say something.

_ “C?” _

Qrow crouches next to him and gingerly takes the Scroll from C’s hand. C feels the glass slip from his fingers, hears Qrow a bit distantly, “James, he’s in shock. He needs some time.”

Ozpin puts a hand on his shoulder again. “Under ordinary circumstances, we would’ve had you sent here in the same manner as the others,” he admits, “but James didn’t want you to experience the trauma of being…well, processed.”

_ I want you to understand that my choices here are limited. _

Qrow returns to his side and sits down next to him on the ground. He hesitates, then smooths a comforting hand over C’s back. The sleeves of the hoodie Qrow gave him are speckled with dirt and tar from the road. C can’t possibly repay him for this.

“I’m sure it must be odd to hear James sound so frightened,” Ozpin murmurs. “But you must understand…he’s very fond of you.”

_ I just realized there wasn’t anyone around to take care of you. You can call me— _

Clover bursts into tears.

* * *

He wakes, sore and hungry and feeling a bit like a dried husk, to the sound of cheery laughter.

He sits up, shoulders twining with the ache that comes from too much sleep. He swallows, licks his dry lips and rubs the grit from his eyes, looks around in confusion until he remembers his surroundings. Sleeping bag, air mattress, tent, camp, caves. The weight of his downward spiral into humanhood crashes down on him again, his throat closing up under the pressure until he takes a deep breath and pushes down the panic. 

Camp chatter is louder than he’s heard it so far, which may not mean much considering how long he cried and slept. Crying is horrible, he’s decided. He’s shed tears from injuries plenty of times, but those were quiet and controlled, not the heavy wracks of his chest and helpless gasping, not the flood down his cheeks and the helpless awareness that he couldn’t stop.

Which turned out not to be true. He stopped when he fell asleep.

Sometime while he slept, someone had left a change of clothes in this tent, a t-shirt and soft sweatpants. He had changed and immediately gone back to sleep, woke briefly later to find his clothes and Qrow’s hoodie gone. And that had sent him into another crying fit, losing the last bit of familiarity that he had. 

He aches thinking about it, somewhere beneath his ribs, until he glances to the side and finds his things folded neatly, notably clean. Clover blinks, raising his brows as he realizes Qrow’s hoodie had been returned too, then reaches over to take it from the pile. 

He swallows tightly, vision blurring before he buries his face in the fabric. It smells like fresh laundry and a hint of lavender, most of the scent of Qrow’s cologne washed out. 

Clover tries very hard not to start crying again before he pulls the hoodie over his head and shakily crawls out of his tent.

The laughter, as it turns out, comes from a small gathering near the center of camp. The smell of sausage and eggs being cooked over a portable burner wafts through the air, and Clover’s stomach rumbles in response. He squints a bit, realizes the figures are the Harbinger kids—and when they arrived, he has no idea—dressed in mismatched pajamas and telling stories with a few other teenagers: those three boys from the picture on Qrow’s mantle, and…and Pyrrha.

Clover looks away sharply. He wonders briefly if Pyrrha knows he’s here before the smell of food steals his attention again, hunger rumbling low in his stomach. Next to Yang sits a blond man that he slowly recognizes as Taiyang Xiao Long, making large gestures as he tells a story Clover can’t hear, and next to Ruby is Qrow, who’s hunched attentively over a skillet and laughing at whatever Taiyang has said.

That fluttering thing swims in Clover’s belly for a moment, and he only realizes he’s taken a step closer when someone behind him clears their throat.

Clover looks back and finds Ozpin standing there, a mug in one hand and the other folded neatly behind his back, still dressed finely but in a notably different suit. “Good morning,” he says cheerfully. 

“Good morning,” Clover says politely, then frowns. “What day is it?”

“Tuesday,” Ozpin answers. He motions at Clover’s tent with his mug. “You slept for almost two days.”

All that sleep, and he’s still exhausted. “Oh,” Clover says, then rubs the back of his neck. Then, still polite, “Thank you for letting me stay here.”

“You make it sound as though you’re a burden,” Ozpin says warmly.

Clover flushes.

“I hope you found your... _ lodgings _ adequate, given the circumstances,” Ozpin adds. “Although we  _ are _ ‘roughing it,’ as Qrow calls it, we do try to make sure everyone is as comfortable as possible during the relocation process.”

Clover furrows his brows. “Relocation,” he repeats.

“Of course. I don’t think cave living is very much in the way of permanent living conditions, do you?”

Clover thinks about his tiny apartment, his sunken-in couch and the cramped kitchen, the cold and disinterested spray of the showers. “I guess not,” he answers.

“I wouldn’t worry,” Ozpin says, taking a sip of his hot chocolate. “I have contacts who are quite proficient at establishing false identities. You’ll be perfectly safe.”

Clover thinks he will spend his entire life looking over his shoulder, if he lives very long. He says quietly, “Thank you.”

Ozpin tilts his head, studying him. After a moment, he hums and takes another sip. Tension runs slowly along the line of Clover’s shoulders; he feels as though he’s being sized up, but for what, he isn’t sure. Finally, Ozpin says, “Qrow tells me something odd happened during your escape.”

_ Pink neon, screeching metal, scorched rubber. Blood dripping to Qrow’s lip. A bruise between his shoulder blades, the distant wail of sirens _ — “The crash,” he supplies after a moment.

Ozpin smiles, wry. “One of many, as I understand,” he says. “I’d like to ask you about it, if you don’t mind.”

Clover hesitates, then nods.

“Excellent,” Ozpin says, then calls, “Qrow? A word?”

Clover’s heart jolts as Qrow looks up before passing whatever he was cooking to Taiyang’s care, then jogs over. He hasn’t thought of a single thing to say yet. What do you say to a man who turns your world upside-down? What do you say to someone who risks their life for you like that, and for nothing? What could he—

“Hey,” Qrow says. He looks pleased, hopeful. “You're awake.”

The reminder that Qrow had seen him fall to pieces hits him suddenly, and Clover feels his cheeks burn. He doesn’t think he’s ever been so embarrassed. “Good morning,” he says after an awkward pause, because he can’t think of anything else.

Qrow’s eyes fall a bit lower, and his smile softens. “You’re still wearing it,” he says.

It takes a second for Clover to realize that Qrow means the hoodie. He tugs on the sleeves. “…It’s warm,” he murmurs, because anything else is too complicated. But he doesn’t really need it to be warm; Replicants aren’t as susceptible to cold, and he has given himself away in saying that, still. 

Even so, Qrow all but beams at him. “Good,” he says.

“Gentlemen,” Ozpin interrupts, clearing his throat as he turns away, “if you’ll join me in my tent, please.”

Qrow glances at him, then flashes Clover a grin and cocks his head after Ozpin and starts to follow, hands in his pockets. There’s a casual slouch to his posture that he doesn’t show on stage, like he’s comfortable to the point of laziness. It’s oddly comforting, though Clover imagines Qrow is well-loved enough around here to be at ease.

He follows them into the tent and raises his brows curiously as Ozpin turns to lean against his table instead of sitting at it. “This won’t take very long,” he says. “As I said, I’ve heard the story from Qrow already, but I’d like to hear your side of things, Clover.”

Clover almost startles. It’s odd to hear someone other than Qrow call him that. It’s …a name, he realizes. His. He’s not sure how he feels about that yet. 

“Agent EL5-3.0 was pursuing me on foot,” he recalls, straightening his shoulders. “We were running in between lanes of stopped traffic. She shot me with a sponge grenade. I went down, but before she could capture me, a car pileup caused her to be trapped between two vehicles. Qrow located me immediately after.”

By the time he’s finished, Ozpin’s brows have gone up in mild amusement. “Although I am a commissioner,” he says, “you needn't be so formal. I’m hardly going to pull rank on you.”

Clover blinks. At his side, Qrow chuckles quietly, and Clover feels himself go pink.

“Now,” Ozpin continues thoughtfully, “You said a car pileup trapped her?”

Clover nods.

“And you weren’t harmed by this wreckage, I presume?”

Clover pauses. “No,” he says carefully. “The car that hit her just barely missed me.”

Ozpin hums. “I see. Well.” He sets his mug down on the table and reaches into his pocket, then pulls out a coin and holds it up between his index finger and his thumb. “I have a theory I’d like to try. Qrow, care to demonstrate?”

“I’d rather not,” Qrow says dryly, then rolls his eyes as Ozpin ignores him and flips the coin.

“Heads or tails?” Ozpin asks, almost mischievous.

Qrow folds his arms, a faint scowl at his mouth. “Tails.”

“Incorrect,” Ozpin announces. “Call midair, please.”

He flips it. Qrow says, “Heads.”

“Wrong. Again.”

“Heads.”

“Wrong.”

“Tails.”

“Wrong!”

Qrow huffs. “Heads,” he guesses.

Ozpin catches the coin and flips it onto the back of his hand. “Unfortunately, wrong,” he replies.

“Very funny.” Qrow sneers.

“What’s the point of this?” Clover asks finally.

“It’s simple,” Ozpin explains. “You see, although Qrow is an adept fighter and quite skilled in games of action, when it comes to games of  _ chance, _ he is…notoriously bad.” 

“Thanks,” Qrow drawls.

“You’re welcome,” Ozpin replies. “Now, although probability semblances like Qrow’s are very hard to detect and control, Qrow has become proficient enough to know full well when misfortune can be attributed to his ability. For a car to hit your colleague, but not you, would have required intense focus from him.” He motions towards Qrow then, adding, “Except that Qrow, at the time, was only focused on reaching you.”

Clover’s eyes widen, and when he looks over at Qrow, the man is avoiding his gaze and rubbing the back of his neck. He looks almost sheepish. For some reason, this sends a little flush of heat to Clover’s belly, that same odd feeling he’d felt when Qrow caught him as he tripped, when Qrow felt for his pulse. “Are you…” he starts, then frowns and looks back to Ozpin. “You’re saying that car crash…that was me? ”

“I believe fortune isn’t quite so direct as that,” Ozpin corrects, “but it’s possible, yes.” He holds up the coin again. “Care to have a go?” 

Speechless, Clover only nods. Ozpin flips the coin. “Heads?” he tries.

Ozpin lifts his hand from the back of the other and shows it to him. “Correct,” he answers, then flips the coin again.

“Tails?”

“Correct.”

Goosebumps prickle along his arms. “Tails.”

“Correct.”

His breath catches. “Heads.”

“Correct again.”

Ozpin flips, slaps the coin down on the back of his hand and waits. Clover’s heartbeat almost skitters. He glances at Qrow; Qrow smiles. Clover looks back at Ozpin’s hands and opens his mouth, then shuts it, then says helplessly, “Tails.”

Satisfied, Ozpin grins, lifts his hand and shows him the coin.  _ Tails. _

Clover stares.

“Five for five is quite impressive,” Ozpin remarks, “don’t you think?”

“I…” Clover tries.

“Semblances often manifest,” Ozpin says, “with heightened stress. Not always, but commonly. You have aura training already, so it was only a matter of time. You were in what I must assume was the most intense situation of your lifetime, where your life in immediate danger, and your Semblance activated as a result. Truthfully, if your Semblance is passive, it may well have manifested some time ago.” He puts the coin down on the table and picks up his mug again, swirling it absentmindedly. “Of course, a coin toss is hardly the most accurate means of testing if your Semblance truly is Good Fortune. But, in the event that we’ve guessed correctly, I suggest you begin training it immediately. Passive Semblances are the easiest to lose control of.”

A Semblance. “But I can’t—” Clover starts.  _ A Semblance. N9’s don’t get told anything, do they?  _ He looks at his hands, like he expects them to do something fantastic, something they weren’t capable of just a few days before. Ozpin has a Semblance. Ozpin is a Replicant and he has a Semblance. And if Ozpin has a Semblance and Ozpin is a Replicant then it only stands to reason that other Replicants—

His stomach growls.  _ Loudly.  _ Clover suddenly remembers that he’s starving.

“It seems I’ve kept you long enough,” Ozpin muses, hiding a smile behind his mug.

“The others are probably still eating,” Qrow says, brightening. He looks…more chipper than he had when they first walked in, plainly pleased and nearly glowing as he turns towards the tent flaps. “I’ll introduce you—”

“I can’t,” Clover blurts.

Qrow stops, brows raised in surprise. “What?”

Clover starts to answer and finds his voice caught in his throat, so instead, he hunches his shoulders, casts his gaze aside and rubs his arms as if chilly. He is not, of course, chilly. 

Ozpin clears his throat, then says, “Qrow. I believe seeing Miss Nikos so soon may be…awkward. For everyone involved.”

Qrow blinks, and then his eyes widen in realization. “Oh,” he says, then glances at Clover. “Right. Uh…right. Well, hey, why don’t you just go back to your tent, and I’ll bring you some food. Alright?”

Clover nods, the tension in his body slowly falling away. “Thank you,” he murmurs.

“Of course,” Qrow says softly, and then slips out of the tent.

Clover watches him go, thinking on Qrow’s warmth and his hands and the width of his shoulders just long enough to forget that Ozpin could see him looking. When he remembers, he flushes, and when he glances back to see if it could’ve possibly gone unnoticed, he finds Ozpin already smiling at him.

Damn.

“You know,” Ozpin says kindly, swirling his mug again and taking a sip, “It’s wonderful that you’re starting this journey of selfhood with people who care for you at your side. You’re quite lucky in that regard, if you’ll pardon my word choice.”

Clover furrows his brow, then glances past the tent flaps again. The chatter from the camp grows louder again, apparently exacerbated by Qrow’s reappearance. 

He thinks about hastily scrawled music notes and guitar calluses, and he thinks about haircuts and white gloves, and he hasn’t the faintest idea how to respond.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the slow chapter. Next update may be a bit slow since I'll be working on Fair Game Week for a while.


End file.
